>> Well, today is Thursday,
January 12th, 2023.
My name is Adina Langer,
I'm the curator of the Museum of History and
Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.
I'm here with Jackie Sherman,
who will be recording a legacy series interview
in memory of her mother's family,
the Regensburgers, and the rest of her family.
And the Regensburgers were from Furth, Germany.
So can you start please by stating your full name?
>> Sure. Jaqueline Ruth Sherman.
>> And do you agree to this interview?
>> Absolutely.
>> Awesome.
Can you please tell me when and where you were born?
>> Sure. I was born in Bethsel Hospital in
Manhattan on January 28th, 1954.
>> So before we talk a little bit about your childhood,
I'd like to go back and start with your mother's family.
Can you please tell me your mother's full name?
>> Sure. Dora Louise Regensburger.
>> And when and where was she born?
>> She was born in Furth,
Germany, and she was born on August 24th, 1925.
>> And what were her parents' names?
>> My Oppa, her father,
was Alfred Powell Regensburger,
and my Oma, her mother,
was Johanna Regensburger,
and I must say I don't know her middle name.
Oh, Bergman, would have been her middle name.
Johanna Bergman Regensburger.
>> Do you know how they came to meet each other?
>> Actually, I don't. I saw
your question and it made me curious, but I don't.
>> And what was your grandfather's profession?
>> He was the owner of a textile mill that was in Huff,
Germany that had been
owned by his cousin David Regensburger.
And I don't know how it is that he inherited it.
I know that he worked there,
that he had done
an internship and come to the United States in
the early 1900s and that he ran the textile mill,
and that one of the things that mill did.
Uniform companies were some of their customers.
>> So they made parts of uniforms.
>> Textile, they wove fabric.
>> And so uniform companies
that served the German government?
>> Undoubtedly, yes.
It may have served other places, but yes.
>> And had this company been around
since before the First World War?
>> Definitely.
>> So what was their neighborhood like in Furth?
>> So I visited with my mother in 2002,
and they lived actually really close to the town square
around the corner from a department store actually.
We went there to buy
an umbrella because it was raining when we were visiting.
It was near the train station.
It was off a main street.
And it was, I guess in New York,
you'd call it a brownstone.
It was a semi-detached multiple floors.
>> And did they own the whole house when they were there?
>> Yes, they did.
>> And did they
have people that helped them in the house?
>> My grandparents were fairly wealthy.
Sometimes I refer to them as German Jewish aristocracy.
And I think the only reason
I say that is that I know they
had what my mother referred to as maids.
So they had a cook and they
had somebody who took care of the house and cleaned.
So they were quite well off.
>> And was there a large Jewish community in Furth?
>> I think so, yes.
Just for the record,
Furth is just outside of Nuremberg.
It's just northeast of Nuremberg.
And so while it had a separate Jewish community,
my mother always referred to doing things
with Jewish friends from Nuremberg.
>> Do you know how they would
have gone from one place to another?
Did they take public transit or they have a car?
>> They may have had a car, but I know that they had
a railway because when my mom
and I were visiting and we took
the train from Berlin to Nuremberg,
you had to change trains,
and the gauge from Nuremberg to Furth was different.
It was a smaller gauge railway.
And so she had a recollection of that.
And one of the things I remember was her talking about
how strange she felt as she got on
this railway, and she wasn't really
quite sure why, and I thought to myself,
I understand why you haven't been here since 1939.
>> And when you went with your mother,
did things look very familiar to her?
>> Totally, absolutely.
>> Department store was a place where she had shopped as
a child and it was right around the corner from their house.
>> And what did the architecture look like?
>> Wow, that's a great question.
I think of it as tall and brick and city-like townhouse
is what the center of town looked like.
>> So what role did Judaism
play in the lives of
your grandparents and your mother's family?
>> So I know that my
mother's family owned seats at the synagogue
and that her family was somewhat observant and
that my mother learned
Hebrew as a child and went
to what we would call Sunday school.
My grandfather was totally
agnostic, maybe even atheistic.
And I think he probably went with the family,
I think they only probably went on high holidays.
>> And I remember in
the oral history you shared
with me that your mother had done,
she talked about Kashrut observance
and how different members
of the family observed at different levels.
Do you remember much about that?
>> Well, I remember
hearing the same part of the interview.
I don't know what my grandparents observed in Germany.
They absolutely observed no Kashrut in the United States.
>> How about German identity,
what role did that play in their lives?
>> So my grandfather,
the way my mother used to describe it
was he was German before he was Jewish.
He thought in the First World War,
he had a iron cross first class.
He really thought of himself as German.
Though I know he identified as Jewish,
his primary identification, I believe,
was as a German.
As far as my grandmother,
I have less of a recollection.
She died when I was about 18 or 19,
and I don't remember having spoken much with her,
but my grandfather didn't die until I was in my mid 20s,
so I had more of an opportunity to converse with him.
>> Can you tell me a little bit
about his military service?
>> Yes. Here's what I know.
He originally signed up to be in the cavalry.
And as I understand it,
the cavalry was not exciting enough for him.
And so he then switched to
the Air Force and became a bombardier.
He definitely won medals.
I know he was really proud of his military service.
And I believe in the effort to leave Germany that
his military service and
his medals supported him
to be able to get out of the country.
>> And did he see action during the First World War?
>> Oh, he dropped bombs, yes.
Sometimes if you think
about the Red Baron and people would joke like,
Oppa was like the Red Baron.
>> So what did
your mother tell you about her early childhood?
>> So I have some stories about her walking to school.
I think they got rolls
for breakfast in the morning that she didn't
necessarily like and she would throw them
behind a bush in front of the house.
She went first to German school,
and then I guess it
would've been after the Nuremberg laws,
they were taken out of the German school and had to go
to a school just for Jewish kids.
I think she had a really enjoyable childhood.
She was the younger of two girls.
My aunt, Marian was four years older than my mom.
And she was definitely interested in boys
and she had friends.
As I understand, she was generous,
she would be given chocolate that she would
then give away to children.
Those are the kinds of stories that I heard.
And then there's a very funny story about
her as a small child.
They had apparently a mustard jar,
not a jar with a lid,
but a piece of pottery that sat on
the maybe a cocktail table and she could
be found spooning mustard
out of the mustard jar and eating it.
>> Did she retain that love of mustard?
>> Yes, she did. Absolutely.
>> Did you ever get a sense for if or how the depression
affected your family between
the First World War and the second?
>> I don't really. It's a great question.
I never thought about it before.
>> So you mentioned a little bit about her personality,
what did she like to do for fun?
>> As an adult?
>> Well, as a kid.
>> As a kid, I'm sure she liked to play
the playground games and hanging out with her friends,
I know she played dolls.
She had a doll from Germany.
So I think the kinds of things that might have been
typical of a girl at her age at that time period.
>> And did she ever recall experiencing
anti-semitism before Hitler rose to power?
>> Before he rose to power,
I don't think so. After, definitely.
>> Did the family have a sense
that Hitler might be dangerous?
>> It's a great question.
My grandmother did.
I think my grandfather thought it would blow
over and this couldn't happen in his Germany.
And I know that my grandmother and grandfather had
a difference of opinion
about what was happening and about how to respond to it.
>> And how did life begin to change for them
after Hitler came to power in 1933?
>> Well, my mom and my aunt had to change schools.
Their ability to go out and be whatever
they wanted to be as they had been in
their younger years was limited.
It's my understanding that
some of the people who had been friendly
with my grandparents were no longer friendly.
There was apparently a price to pay if you
decided as an adult that you were going to
hang out with Jewish people.
So I think it got restricted.
>> And there was a story that I think
you had told me and that your mother also
relayed about how her sister
didn't look what was thought to be Jewish looking,
looked Arian and that kind of
affected their life in their school.
>> So apparently, my aunt was asked to
play the Christmas angel in her school Christmas play.
And as I understand it,
my grandmother went to talk to
the rabbi to make sure this was okay.
And he said yes.
And then there must have been some sort
of write up in the newspaper and a picture of her.
She was blond haired and had blue eyes.
And this was dragged through the press.
I think it's called the [FOREIGN].
And so they had some backlash from that.
And so that would have been right
around the time that the kids would have been
taken out of German school.
>> So then With
the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935,
how did things continue to change for them?
>> Well, I think the restriction and they were not able
to move around the city
in the same way or have the same kind of friends.
And as I understand it,
they were paid a very small amount of
money for their apartment or for their home,
and then they were put on some sort of an allowance.
So from a financial perspective,
things would have tightened up.
>> And they lived so close to Nuremberg.
Did your mother ever tell you about seeing
people attend rallies or anything like that?
>> No, she didn't.
>> So at this point
did your grandparents ever discuss leaving the country?
>> Apparently, my grandmother
spoke to my grandfather about it and really
wanted to leave and because he didn't
really believe this was happening in his Germany,
he refused to leave.
And then, as I understand it,
they were visiting in the summer of '38 in Berlin.
And things were clearly getting
worse and apparently, friends of my grandmother's
had been making arrangements and managing to leave.
And she told my grandfather,
"You can stay, but I'm getting the girls
out and I'm going to get out."
And at that point,
as I understand it,
my grandfather made arrangements to
buy a ticket for my mom on an early kinder transport.
She left in early February.
And my aunt was away at school
and she left in April and then I
believe my grandparents left in
either the summer, August, September.
>> So during all of this time,
did your grandfather lose his business?
>> I don't know at what point he lost his business.
I know he did lose his business.
It couldn't have been too early
because my mom told me that,
and this is actually on the tape,
immediately after Kristallnacht,
my grandfather took the revolver that he had from
the service and late one night
walked out and threw it in the river.
And then shortly after that, apparently,
he had a saber from when he was in the cavalry.
And he had an office in the back of their home in fact,
in which he had bolts of cloth.
Because I think in addition to whatever they did in
the factory for larger customers,
he must have taken
commissional business for suits and things like that.
And so he took the saber,
wrapped it up in the bolt of cloth and
walked it over to the SS office
because he knew that if they found
either the revolver or the saber in their home,
that basically they would use the weapons on them.
>> So what did
your mother tell you about
her her memories of Kristallnacht?
>> So the Nazis came,
knocked on the door,
told them to get dressed,
they were going into the town square.
Apparently, my mom was not dressed in anything
particularly warm and one of the officers said,
well, you better wear something really warm,
it's going to be very cold where you're going.
And so they didn't live very far from the center of town
from where I believe people were being rounded up.
And so they walked into the square,
and at one point, my mom
said she had to go to the bathroom.
And so apparently the women
and the men had been separated by then.
And apparently the women
would make a like a circle around
her to give her a little bit of privacy in
order to be able to go to the bathroom.
It's an interesting memory that she had.
And then I guess the men were taken off in one direction
and many of the men were sent on cars to Dachau.
I don't know how it is that
my grandfather was not on one of those cars.
The women were sent home
and they were very concerned
whether they would see my grandfather again.
And when they got home,
my grandmother told my mom to
go get something to eat because she hadn't had anything.
And she was in the kitchen and apparently,
all of a sudden my grandfather appeared.
And so they were just feeling really fortunate.
And what I've been told and what was on this tape
is my grandfather was the head of
the Jewish war veterans in the Nuremberg area.
And he considered those men to be like his men.
And apparently, he negotiated to
get them all back from Dachau.
So I know nothing more about how that happened,
but my understanding is that he was
able to get them to release them.
>> And I know in the archive that you shared,
there is some documentation
where he's written the names of some of these men.
It's really extraordinary.
So this was all then before they went to Berlin?
>> Well, they didn't they never moved to Berlin.
My great grandparents, my Opas parents lived in Berlin.
As did his brother who was a doctor.
So I think that must have happened I don't know.
Sometime in the fall.
I don't know it was before or after.
>> But they were definitely in Furth on Crystal Night?
>> Absolutely. Yes. And Furth
did not have the same experience of
Crystal Night as Nuremberg did.
So there wasn't the same smashing of glass
and grandparents' home was not harmed in any way,
the way homes and stores were harmed in Nuremberg.
>> It's amazing to have such a difference with
such a tiny distance between the two places.
They don't know exactly what
happened to your grandfather in the hours
between when they separated
from him and when they saw him again?
>> I'm sure they do, but I don't. Sadly.
>> So what did they decide to do next?
You mentioned that they began to make
arrangements for their daughters.
>> So my grandmother was the youngest of nine.
And if not her oldest sister,
one of her older sisters,
or a cousin had married Brit and lived in London.
She married into a prominent family, I believe.
So one of their relatives was in the House of Lords.
And so my grandmother started to make arrangements.
I really asked them if they could
receive my mother and my aunt,
and then eventually them.
And I think at the same time,
my grandfather found a Polish Jew who for
a hefty sum was helping transport people's home effects,
furniture, linens, silverware,
whatever, out of the country.
And he told my grandfather to pack up
some trunks and prepare to have them sent out.
My mom my grandmother sewed some jewelry into some of
the linens and they sent it to England.
>> And did your mother when she was sent on the train,
did she have additional jewelry
or money sewn into her clothing?
>> That's a great question. I know that
jewelry was sewn into some clothing,
but I don't know that it was sewn into
the clothing that she was wearing on the train.
My suspicion is no,
because I think had they found it,
she would not have made it out.
I know she was instructed when she got
to London to the train station that
she was supposed to go to the baggage keep to
the baggage claim area
and inquire to see if the trunks had arrived,
which apparently they had,
and then she had been instructed
to write a postcard that said,
the children have arrived as a way a code word.
And I find that first of all, interesting,
but amusing because I can remember
when we were growing up and you had
to pay for a long distance call and my parents had
some code words like you could collect and say,
home or ines,
I'll be home at 8:00 or at 1:00.
When I heard that, I thought it was interesting.
I guess how people create these codes.
>> And what was
your mother's journey to England like for her?
>> So my understanding is that
my grandfather had pneumonia at the time,
and so he was not able to go to the station.
My grandmother took her to the station.
She was on a train.
She had a cousin around the same age who
was traveling with her.
And I believe they had an older cousin who was actually
accompanying some of the kinder transports to England.
They went through,
is it called Hof Van Holland or something like that.
That would have been the first stop.
They had some friends who lived there who met them
and then they continued going on across the channel.
>> And you mentioned that
your aunt traveled separately from your mother?
And what was her experience like?
>> I know absolutely nothing. I wish I did.
>> And what did
your mother do then when she arrived in England?
>> So I guess first I'd say is that
my mother learned French in school, but not English.
So my grandmother arranged
to have private English lessons,
realizing that they were
going to try to get the girls out to England.
So my mother was "Learning English"
but it's clear she didn't feel very competent at it.
She got to the train station and kept
practicing saying I don't understand much English.
In my childhood, memory brain,
I have a picture of her sitting on
her suitcase in the middle of the arrival hall
waiting for her aunt or
cousin to come and pick her up and be received.
It's clear in my childhood picture brain.
So she was received and she was put in boarding school.
I believe that family lived in Kent or Sussex.
And so she was put in boarding school there.
And then when it was no longer safe and they were
getting people out of
what I call the Greater London area,
the boarding school moved to Wales.
And so she finished
boarding school during the time
that she was in England and Wales.
And she would use the word pleasant experience.
I have some stories like no food was wasted.
So if people didn't want
the potato skins and they were sitting on the plate,
and my mother was always very happy to eat that part.
>> And did she ever tell you any memories of air raids?
>> I don't remember any of that.
If she did, I don't remember.
>> And what did she like about boarding school?
Did she tell you any particular things
that she enjoyed about it?
>> I think she liked her friends.
And what I would say
is given what the situation had been like in Germany,
I would imagine that it
was somewhat of a state of normalcy,
even though she was not with her parents.
>> And you had told me at one point that
your aunt had some background
in farming and that
that changed her experience in England.
She did different things.
>> So I believe in 1939,
before leaving for England,
she was in a farm school of some sort,
not in Furth,
and she was part of a group of people who were
being trained in farming to move to Kenya.
So what I learned
visiting Nairobi once was that there was
actually a movement to
have an Israel like country in East Africa.
And so my connection is it was related to that.
So she was learning farming.
When she went to England,
I think they put her in more of a farm school.
My aunt was very smart.
She loved to read and she was,
what my mother would say was
the intellectual in the family.
>> It's such an interesting juxtaposition
because you had told me about
her intellectualism and then also imagine her farming.
>> I know. I don't understand that.
From what I know of my aunt,
I would imagine that the notion of
the quality on a kibbutz would have
been very attractive to her.
>> And can you just define the kibbutz a little..
>> Sure. So collective farms
that are generally associated with being in Israel,
but I'm thinking that they must have been
thinking that there would be such things in East Africa.
>> And I know that that's also associated
with socialism or communism movements,
was that part of the training?
>> I don't know if it was part of the training.
What I do know is that my aunt had very,
what you would call,
liberal leftist political views.
When she was in school in the United States,
she went to a Quaker College.
She was very much of a pacifist.
So I guess I connect the two
and she definitely would have had socialist leanings.
>> So how did your grandparents then get to England?
>> Great question.
I'm thinking my grandfather
somehow managed to buy tickets.
From what I can tell
from the papers that I've inherited,
he made arrangements to get a number of
families out and sponsored in the United States.
So they had relatives in the US with whom they must have
corresponded and asked first
for sponsorship to go to the United States.
So they didn't have an intention of staying in England.
England was a stop
on the way to getting to the United States.
>> So you mentioned that after the war started
and your mother and her school,
they evacuated to Wales.
What happened to your grandparents after the war started?
>> When they were in England,
my grandfather couldn't work.
He was very disturbed that he couldn't work.
He was a proud man and he worked hard in his factory.
And I know he was
really disturbed that he wasn't able to work.
So I think they just lived in the in the country house of
her relatives until they were able
to get passage to the United States.
>> And I recall in maybe it was
your mother's interview that
your grandfather was actually interned?
>> He was interned in the Isle of Man.
And when they finally got passage to the states,
they were set to leave out of
Glasgow and my grandmother and my mom and
her sister were already on the boat in Glasgow and
my grandfather was supposed to
arrive and he wasn't coming and he wasn't coming.
And what my mom said on her show interview was
that apparently, they sent him to the wrong port.
So they sent him to Liverpool.
And then had to quickly
get him from Liverpool to Glasgow.
And so again, in my little childhood memory,
what my mom says in
her interview is that my grandmother was begging
with the captain of the ship to wait
that my grandfather would be coming and he wasn't.
And they were leaving in convoy because it was wartime.
And so the captain said I just can't wait any longer.
We have to go and all of a
sudden they see this light from
a flashlight coming through the departure hall,
and it's my grandfather.
I have in my head that he jumped
the plank to get onto the boat just in the nick of time.
>> It's amazing all these stories of him
appearing in the nick of time is.
>> Yes.
>> So what did they have to get
together in terms of
immigration documents in order
to go to the United States?
>> I wish I could tell you. I don't know.
>> But I think you did tell me a little bit
about working with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society?
>> They were received by high as the Hebrew Immigrant
Aid Society when they arrived in the United States.
And they were housed by Highest originally.
And then once moved
out of a more communal living situation.
They were I don't know,
whether given or found an apartment, which they rented.
And my grandfather had to look for work.
My mom was still in high school.
She was enrolled in George Washington High school.
They lived in Washington Heights.
Eventually, they got an apartment on 181st Street.
It was a one bedroom apartment.
Apparently, my mother and my aunt slept in
the bedroom and my grandparents
slept on a couch in the living room.
And they had that apartment until my grandfather
was in his 80s and moved
into a senior independent living home.
>> And how did they look for work?
What were some of the things that we did?
>> Well, so talk about my grandmother first.
She did piece work.
She was a very good knitter.
She did piece work and knitted.
And also, she worked as a baby nurse.
How she found the work, I don't know.
And I think she also did cleaning.
When I think about her upbringing as
a pretty wealthy woman in Germany to then,
she did what she had to do.
And it was a very big change.
My grandfather who had been
a business man in Germany also had to look for work.
I think he did traveling sales things.
And in an effort to earn money,
one of the things I found in the papers
was a letter that he had written to the Gillette company.
He had a Gillette safety razor
that apparently he must have acquired before World War 1.
Made it through World War 1,
and he thought perhaps
the Gillette company would be interested in owning
this relic or historically preserved razor.
It was a very elaborate letter,
and he got a fairly short terse. Thank you.
We have plenty of these
but he's trying to trade whatever he could.
Eventually, man, I don't know,
they arrived in 1940.
And I don't know how long it took
before he was able to buy a car. He bought a car.
And he really became a traveling salesman that sold,
you could call them knickknacks or trinkets
to drug stores so to pharmacies.
I guess there's a version of this today in CVS and stuff,
but I remember as a child,
there were always these little things
that you could buy that were
on the counter at the drug store.
His trunk was filled with these things.
The little people or animals where
you pushed up a hole in a piece
of wood and animal would collapse for you.
So the trunk of
his car was always filled with those because he
drove up to the Catskills every week and
sold that and then came home on the weekends.
>> So thinking about,
I had the opportunity to read the letter he wrote to
Gillette again this morning and it's so moving to me,
the story that he imbues this artifact with,
and I keep thinking about that's exactly something
that a museum would appreciate even if Gillette didn't,
but it just tells so much about
his hopes and the challenges that he was facing.
So, what did
your mother do after she graduated from high school?
>> She worked in a doctor's office.
She had a relative who was a doctor, an internist,
and she worked as a doctor's assistant,
and then eventually,
as a dental assistant,
she had I don't know whether Dr. Steinfeld was
a relative or a friend of the family,
but she worked as a dental assistant
really until I was born in 1954.
>> How did she come to meet your father?
>> On a ski trip. Apparently, there
were buses that left the Port Authority on
a Friday late afternoon to go up to
either what we called Upstate New York or into Vermont.
And so she went one weekend and on this weekend,
she met my dad.
As the story goes,
I think she might have been interested.
He must have been interested in her.
And he asked her if she could get off
another weekend because the doctors
and the dentists all worked on the weekends.
She could get off another weekend
so they could meet again skiing,
and apparently, she did
everything she could to make that happen.
[LAUGHTER]
>> How did she learn to ski?
Did she learn from her parents?
>> I have no clue.
I don't know if they learned in Germany.
I know when they lived in Germany,
the family took vacations in the mountains,
but the stories that I've heard would have all been,
at times when you could easily walk trails
and pick up flowers and things like that.
So I don't know how she learned to ski.
>> What was your father's full name?
>> Stuart K. Sherman.
>> And where did his family come from?
>> My father's father came from Russia,
I think the area that's the Ukraine.
And my grandmother came from the part, well,
she was born in the United States,
actually, on the day of Dewey's parade.
She was born in New York.
But her family came from the part of Poland
that went back-and-forth between Russia and Poland.
>> And they were Jewish?
>> Yes. Both.
>> But they came to
the United States long before World War II.
>> Yeah. I think my grandfather came in 1909.
He was the second.
>> Sorry.
>> I'm going to ask that one again.
>> Yes [OVERLAPPING].
>> And they came long before World War II?
>> Yes. I think that he came in 1909.
I don't know my grandfather's whole family
came at the same time,
but I believe he came in 1909.
And he was the second of Jenny,
Dudley, [inaudible] , I think there were nine children,
several of whom died in fires,
and maybe there was a stillbirth,
but I believe there were
five or six that came to the United States,
and they lived on the Lower East Side.
In fact, there was a club,
they lived at 10 Rivington Street,
which, when we went to the museum at Ellis Island,
there was a picture of 10 Rivington Street,
which eventually was a settlement house,
and I think it was
called the University Settlement House.
I may have the place where they lived wrong
and be confusing it with
the settlement house club
where they went as young people.
But it was really interesting to see that photo.
And then many years later, my great aunt,
my grandfather's brother's wife,
I went with Aunt Rebecca and my cousin Molly
on a tour of the Lower East Side and we
got to actually tour the settlement house.
It was pretty cool, actually.
>> That's awesome. Do you
know if Sherman was the original name?
>> I don't.
>> It's just interesting to me because actually,
it doesn't sound especially Russian or Polish.
>> No, it sounds more German-like [inaudible]. [LAUGHTER]
>> So, what was your parents' marriage like?
>> That's always an interesting question.
[LAUGHTER] So the first thing I would say is,
I call it a Jewish mixed marriage,
meaning she was
Western European and more upper middle class,
and he was from
an Eastern European family
and the cultures were very different.
Mom came from a very cultured European background,
and I think really through her whole life,
she thought of herself as European.
And people who met her
would experience that in her manners,
and even in the way she spoke.
And my dad's family was very Eastern European,
a little bit loud,
maybe a little brash.
I think it was probably
orthodox when they were growing up,
but more conservative style of Judaism.
And it was a big family,
and they got together regularly for holidays.
And I remember the passovers that we had
at my uncle [inaudible] country club.
>> Did they speak Yiddish?
>> They did not speak Yiddish to each other.
I don't think my mother knew Yiddish,
but because she knew German,
she could understand Yiddish.
And I don't know how much my father might have spoken it.
I doubt it. I would assume my grandparents spoke Yiddish.
>> So what were some of your
first memories of your parents?
>> That's a great question.
I have lots of memories of things like
ski trips because skiing was really my parents sport,
and I started walking on skis when I was two,
as my nephew, and I think did my sister.
They were pretty fun, loving.
In addition to doing a lot of skiing,
I remember my father played a lot of tennis.
He loved tennis and he taught
me tennis when I was pretty young.
We have pictures of and I have memories
of my parents going to a Halloween party as
Zorro and [inaudible] I remember
these stiletto heels that had at
one point been patent leather and were sprayed gold.
So they played a lot of scrabble.
That was our family game.
It still is our family game.
Apparently, early in their marriage,
my father entered a crossword puzzle contest
through the New York Times and had this whole system.
My father was an engineer,
and he had a whole system for how
they were going to figure out the words,
and it was laid out on
my grandmother's big dining room table.
So they had things they like to do together.
I remember Hanukkah in our home,
my mother was very creative.
We got eight little gifts and they would be
strong from ribbon on the banister.
I would have one colored ribbon and
my sister would have the other and we would get
to choose one and cut it off each night.
My parents decided,
probably I must have been about
seven years old at the time or eight,
that it was fine to have Mother's Day and Father's Day,
but they were going to invent Children's day,
so we would have the day every year.
Something tells me it was in September.
When we would get to decide everything,
what we wanted to eat for each of the meals,
what we wanted to do.
My mom took us to concerts and the art museum.
I remember seeing, you know,
the Leonard Bernstein young
people's concerts when I was little,
I still have a picture of me and in
a white angora hat and
a blue valorous top going into New York City at the time,
even though we only lived a subway ride away,
we got dressed up to go into New York City.
It was a big outing.
>> What about your memories of your Oma and Oppa?
>> So my memory of my Oma
sadly is almost like a depressed face.
She was warm, she was loving,
she was a good cook, and she was a great baker.
She made the most wonderful cookies and tarts,
and my mother learned to do that as well.
But I don't remember her as particularly happy.
My Oppa on the other hand,
he was really always optimistic and upbeat,
He was very committed to the family.
He had a heart attack.
I'm thinking it was maybe in his 70s,
and I think at the time,
things were difficult financially in our family,
and my dad had switched jobs.
My brother is 12 years younger than I am.
So Mark was born in 1965,
and two years later,
my dad sold or got
out of the paint business that he had been in with
my grandfather and went back to
school to become a computer programmer.
So he was very early in the computer industry,
and things were really tight financially.
My parents owned a home, it's amazing.
They paid $400 a month for
their mortgage that they got it, like 4%.
So they didn't and they weren't going to lose their home.
But things were really tight.
I remember what we ate for dinner shifted from meat,
maybe four or five or six times a week
to more spaghetti and things like that.
My mother always said she thinks that my grandfather,
my Oppa came through his heart attack because he
felt like she and our family needed him.
The way I think of it is he was really loyal,
you can see that in what he did to get
people out of Germany.
And he was really loyal to my grandmother.
He lived in New York City.
She was in a nursing home,
I think it was in Hackensack or maybe further than that.
And he at 80 whatever,
would take the bus three times a week to go visit her.
He had an injured arm and I can remember him carrying
this bag with whatever
food or whatever he was bringing her on the bus with him.
>> It's really sweet. Did you
know your aunt, your mother's sister?
>> I did. I met my aunt the first
time I want to say
in the early '60s she came from the United States.
So I'll give you a little of her history.
She Mariana Regensburger.
She went to Earlham College on a scholarship,
and then she enrolled at the news school
for I think what was
supposed to be a PhD in political science.
Apparently, she must have been interested
in journalism because she got
an internship in Munich, where she went.
I think she went back in 1950. Is that possible?
>> So just 10 years after she came to the US?
>> Yeah. That makes about about sense.
Maybe late late '40.
I think so because that picture that we see,
the one with the car is from 1948.
So she took the internship and basically,
she never returned to the United States to live.
She worked for newspaper in Munich.
She worked for other newspapers.
Eventually, she moved to Berlin,
where she lived until she died in,
I want to say 2002, 2003.
And she worked in
a variety of aspects of what you call the media.
She wrote for newspapers,
she wrote both, I think news and opinion pieces.
She was very active in the peace movement in
Germany, in Leftist politics.
And so then she went from print to TV journalism.
My aunt was 4'11".
So if she was short and she had small bones.
I have this picture of her standing on
a wooden box holding a microphone doing an interview.
So she did television.
Before she did television,
she was on RIAS the Radio International
of the American Sector in Berlin.
She had a very well known voice.
My mom tells a story of
my grandfather being in a cab with
Mariana in Berlin and
she's giving the cab driver directions,
and he recognizes her and says,
are you Mariana Regensburger?
She was well known for her journalism and outspokenness.
>> And so you mentioned that was the American Sector.
Was she then based in West Germany?
>> Yes.
>> And did her leftist politics,
was that ever an issue?
>> Yeah, I think it was dangerous for her.
I remember my mom said something
about "there was money on her head."
There were people who apparently wanted
to get rid of her or harm her in some way.
I don't really know the details,
but she was very outspoken.
>> And then did she have
opinions on the Cold War that was going on?
>> I don't know what the opinions were about.
She did a lot of exposes to expose former Nazis.
I think that was another reason
why she might have been wanted.
So I met her for the first time in the early 60s.
I think the second time
we lived in Queens and then in 1963,
we moved south of Chicago.
My dad was transferred to
build a factory outside of Chicago.
And then we moved back to
New Jersey in 1965 right before my brother was born.
And I think she must have come to visit sometime
in the 65-68 range.
I always thought she was really cool.
She would walk me to school and I got to
try she smoked and I tried cigarettes,
never to try them again.
My mother was not happy that she let me do that.
I was always really interested in her.
And so I did my junior year
abroad and the summer that I traveled in Europe,
I made a point of visiting her for a week in Berlin.
So I got to know her then and then I lived in Paris for
a little while and visited her when I was
there, I'm thinking 1978.
And then once during the years I
lived in West Africa or when I was
coming through Europe,
and then a last time shortly before she died.
I was really interested in the fact that she
left in 1950 and never returned.
And I don't think she ever
planned to return to the United States.
And so I found myself really curious about that.
When I was growing up and maybe it's still true now
among Jewish teens would hear their parents talk about,
they wouldn't buy anything German,
they wouldn't buy Mercedes or,
you know, anything from crops.
And I always felt like
I didn't have the luxury
to say I'm not going to visit Germany,
most Jews would not even consider visiting Germany.
But I didn't feel like I had
that luxury because my aunt lived there,
my family was there,
I wanted to know her.
And I tried to really understand what made her go back
and I don't know that I ever
asked her directly until the last time I saw her,
but because she did these exposes,
I decided that perhaps
her returning and doing the journalism she did was
about making sure that what happened with Hitler
would never happen again and particularly not in Germany.
And when I asked her,
the answer I got was yes,
she was really devoted to uncovering things
and making sure that what happened was exposed,
that people were exposed so that people would have
the knowledge to help make
sure that this didn't happen again.
>> And you had mentioned and I
read some things about her and
she converted to Christianity.
>> She became Lutheran.
I think this was about a couple of things.
First of all, there really wasn't
much of a Jewish community,
and my aunt was fiercely
feminist and the Judaism that she knew,
which prevails in many parts of
Judaism today was very male oriented,
had a sense of chauvinism that she
felt that she really didn't want any part of.
And I believe that many of
her friends from the peace community were Lutheran,
so she converted to being Lutheran.
I know that she would have studied the theology.
She could read Greek and Latin,
but I don't know what
her thinking was about why she wanted to convert,
why she wanted to be any religion for that matter.
>> It's fascinating.
So you mentioned that you have a younger brother.
Do you have any other siblings?
>> Yeah. Actually, I'm the oldest of three.
There's me, my sister,
Wendy, she's 22 months younger than I am,
and then my brother who
is 11 and three-quarter years younger than I am,
or 10 years younger than she is.
>> And so you mentioned some holiday celebrations.
In general, what role did Judaism
play in your childhood in your growing up?
>> So as a small child,
I remember it would have largely been my father's family
that celebrated Passovers and had
big gatherings for those holidays and we participated.
I don't remember my mother's parents
doing anything particularly Jewish.
We always lived Hanukkah candles and celebrated
that I think my parents didn't work,
my dad wouldn't have worked on the Jewish high holidays.
It wasn't until we moved to
south of Chicago where we were very much in a minority.
I think there were eight Jewish kids
in my elementary school where
we started to go to Sunday school and
my parents joined a Jewish community.
And then when we moved from south
of Chicago to Englewood,
New Jersey, which had
a pretty sizable Jewish population,
and there were three main synagogues,
if not all in Englebly in the Englewood area that
we joined a synagogue and
continued to go to Sunday school.
My sister and I were not Bar Mitzvah.
My brother was Bar Mitzvah and by then,
my parents had shifted from
the synagogue that we had belonged
to when I was growing up to
another one that they helped form.
What I remember after we moved to New Jersey is that we,
I don't know whether I remember this better because I was
older or just because
it was a distinctly different way of observing.
But we always observed the high holidays
and my mom had family for dinner.
We always made a big payoff Passover
mostly my father's cousins
would come or we would occasionally go to their place.
And there was always a lovely Hanukkah celebration.
>> When did you first learn about the story of
your mother and your grandparents'
emigration to the United States?
>> It's a really good question.
I don't know.
I am fairly sure I must have known something in
the seven-year oldish
that's how I would place it. Maybe younger.
My grandparents spoke with a very heavy German accent.
My name, Jackie was never pronounced Jackie.
I was Chegg or Degrossa, the older one.
And my mom spoke German with her parents.
My father didn't understand German,
so my parents didn't speak it at home.
But I could usually tell if if my mom and
my grandparents were talking about
me or my sister, Declina.
So I don't know when
it would have filled in with a lot of details.
I certainly knew a fair amount by the time I was
in Junior high in high school.
>> So you knew that they were from Germany.
Did you know that they were refugees?
>> Yes. I did.
I don't know when I knew that,
but I did know
probably sometime in Junior high in high school,
not before that my mom had left Germany
on children's transport that she had been in England,
that she had gone to boarding school,
that basically they had escaped.
That would be the way it would have been phrased.
>> And when did you first learn about
the Holocaust as a historical event?
>> Well, that's a great question.
I'm thinking as a teenager.
>> And at that point, could you ask
them more questions or were you able to?
>> I could have. My mother
would have been happy to answer
any questions that she could answer.
I don't remember asking my grandmother any questions.
It's possible that I did.
I'm sure as I got older,
I asked some questions of my grandfather.
So my family was
not hush hush about their Holocaust experience.
I know that my mother did not consider herself
a survivor until she was in her 60s
when she attended the Nuremberg community refugees in
the United States had
like a group of people that would get together,
if not annually several times every couple of years.
And my mom started attending
these gatherings that they held up in the Catskills,
I think at Grossinger's.
And she attended a workshop once in
which she learned that she too was considered a survivor.
And I know there are lots of people who
escaped and had not been in
a camp who never considered themselves survivors.
And I think that shifted
some things in terms of my mother's ability to start to
integrate some understanding about
how that experience of having left at
thirteen-and-a-half and what they went through might have
affected her or might be affecting her as an adult.
>> What role do you think
her experiences and to some extent,
your grandparents' experiences played in
her life and how
she looked at the world
or how she raised you and your siblings.
>> So I think overall,
she had a bit of a scarcity mentality.
And frankly, probably had some level,
although I don't remember this when I was a child,
I certainly remember it more as an adult,
that she might have had
some level of low grade depression.
My grandmother certainly did.
I think she had a lot of gratitude for what she had.
Her commitment to voting and
her membership and activeness
in the league of women voters.
I can remember her taking me to
the voting booth as
a small child and she never missed an election.
She felt like this was something that
was taken from them in Germany and that
was really important that she
fulfill her obligations or right as a citizen.
Same thing with jury duty.
How else might it have affected us growing up?
So I think probably
the strongest way would be emotionally.
So my grandfather was very stoic,
as was my mother.
And when my siblings and I look at my mom's show a tape.
We're all struck by how
dispassionate she is in telling her story,
how seemingly removed she is from recounting the events.
And I think she must have had to develop
some self protection mechanism in terms
of managing her emotions because I think she did feel
things deeply and she was a very compassionate person.
But I don't think
either of my parents were
particularly comfortable with their emotions.
And so I think all three of us struggled to find
them and let them out and
be what I would call publicly vulnerable.
I think I probably developed that
first as a result of having
done some therapy starting in my 20s,
and I think my brother and
sister really much later in their lives.
>> So are there other ways that your family history,
maybe has shaped your outlook on life?
>> Well, I'll tell you from a food perspective.
[LAUGHTER] I do really like things that,
might have a German flavor,
whether it be cakes and cookies
or things that would be highly not kosher,
but we ate all of those things and very European food.
We ate steak tartar when I was a child.
So definitely from a food perspective.
Ask the question again.
>> Just how your family's experience
affected your outlook on the world.
>> I think I was always curious about
Europe and people who came from other places.
So from the time I was in high school,
I knew I wanted to take my junior year abroad,
that I wanted to explore.
I always wanted to meet
people I'm very interested in people who are
from other places and have
different life experiences than I do.
I think that I have an ability though I
know I cannot really imagine what
it is like to be someone other than myself.
I think I have
an ability and a willingness to try to put myself in
others shoes and try to understand
other people's experiences and outlooks.
And I grew up with a strong sense
of Tikkun olam of my obligation to repair the world.
I think I got that probably both from
my mom and also from my dad's family
that supported a camp
for underprivileged kids in New York,
a little bit like fresh air but not the same.
So I think I've always
had a feeling of volunteering and giving back.
And my first profession was as a development economist.
So the year I lived in England as a junior,
I studied development economics.
So the economics of developing countries and I got really
interested and I decided that's what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be a development economist
and I went to graduate school,
I got a PhD in economics and
my two areas of interest were developing countries.
And international economics, monetary policy, et cetera.
So when I had
the opportunity to decide
what I wanted to do my dissertation on,
I had had some colleagues who had all
lived in Africa and done research.
And I got really interested in
doing that and fortunately was
given an opportunity to go to teach
economics in West Africa and to work on my dissertation.
It was a really, really fascinating experience.
It was particularly interesting,
that it was a time when
the UN had just passed the anti zionist resolution,
And I was living in what was
then Upper Volta and is now Burkina Faso.
And I lived in the Bush for a while
and a chief in a village up the road had heard
that there was an Israeli American woman
living in the town I was in.
And the Israel part was
that the Israeli's had worked in Upper Volta to
help teach about a agriculture
and irrigation and things like that.
And so he got curious and actually invited
me for lunch one day.
And I remember he made this, like,
big toast to the Israeli's.
At a time when the Upper Volta government
was basically wanting to kick Israel out of the UN.
I don't know.
I had this consciousness of a difference,
and I was interested in
helping developing countries feed themselves.
I learned while I was there that I didn't think
as a 27 or eight year old woman,
I should be telling developing
country governments what to do,
which was the only way you could
be an economist at that time.
So I eventually changed fields.
I think the field that I've been in,
which is organization development and
coaching is a organizational version
of making the world a better place.
>> That's great. So just
backtracking a tiny bit curiosity,
what was your education like leading
up to graduate school before you [inaudible]
>> So I went to high school in Englewood,
New Jersey was very good high school at the time.
I graduated high in my class.
I went to, Tufts University at the time.
It was Jackson College.
There was still a Women's College when I applied.
And as I said, I always
wanted to take my junior year abroad.
So I studied in England for my junior year.
I still have friends from the apartment I lived in there.
And I was studying mathematics.
To start with, I thought I wanted
to be a mathematician and I learned
fairly quickly that I did
not have the head for abstract math.
But you could apply math to economics.
And when I was in
my first year in college was the time of
Nixon's 14 point plan and I got really
interested in economics and
one of my best friends in high school,
who was a year ahead of me
was studying math and had taken an econ course.
And so I got interested and took econ,
I think my freshman year.
And so I switched from being
a math major to being an econ major.
And I think I've been a teacher all my life.
I am one of those kids who played teacher as a kid.
And so I imagined myself as
a teacher and my intention
was to be a university professor.
I realized that I really
wasn't what I like to say is
in the world of publish or perish,
I would have published because I have
a high achievement motivation,
but I would have personally perished in the process
because the writing alone and
the waiting years for things to be accepted did
not fit my need for a different kind of feedback.
>> So one last question
before we get to how you came to Atlanta.
You would have been a pretty young teenager
during the time of
Martin Luther King and a lot of
civil rights discussion and
activism in the United States.
Did you have a sense for what was going on with
that from your spot in Englewood?
>> I think I did actually.
Englewood is a town that I
used to describe as 50% black,
50% white and half the whites were Jewish.
That's how you can describe my high school.
I had friends who were African American,
half the school was African American.
So I feel like I grew up in a time
where I knew people who came from different backgrounds.
For me, my bus went
through both a white part
of town and a black part of town.
My parents were very aware and liberal.
So I think I had some idea of what was going on.
Was it a deep social justice consciousness?
I don't know, but there was some for sure.
>> So what then
ultimately brought you you've been living in Africa,
you switched careers. What brought you to Atlanta?
>> The weather. The year I turned 40,
I realized that I was physically cold all the time.
So I grew up in New York,
I went to college in Boston,
I went to graduate school in Michigan.
A little bit of time in Africa, warm weather,
the only real experience in
warm weather I had in terms of living in warm weather.
My family was never oriented toward
Florida or the Caribbean.
But I discovered I could
live in warm weather and actually,
I quite liked being warm.
So in my late 30s,
I discovered I have Raynaud's,
which is a circulatory syndrome
which made my hands and feet cold all the time.
And I realized and
it was causing me to physically contract.
And so I started to
think about where could I go or where could I
live or where I would really kind of be able to be more
relaxed and comfortable and have my body have like,
a more sunny outlook, if you will.
I think my mom used to call
me Jackie sunshine when I was a kid.
I had this bright yellow rain coat.
And I think I had a sunny side,
but as I got older and I got colder,
that really became difficult.
And so I was looking for a warm place to live
and I had a few criteria.
I wanted it to be cosmopolitan because I
liked museums and theater and things like that.
I wanted there to be a good sized Jewish population.
I wanted it to be warm.
And I wanted to know at least one person.
And my college roommate,
Cindy Smith lived here.
And so by a process of elimination,
I guess I had an unwritten criteria that I wanted to be
relatively like on the same coast as my family.
So that's what brought me to Atlanta.
>> And so when did you move here?
>> 1994 in July.
>> So just a few summative questions.
Why do you think it's important for
students to learn about the Holocaust?
>> It's a really good question.
So I think that
it's important to understand what
happened to people in the same way,
I think it's important for me to understand slavery
or any of the other genocides
that have happened around the world.
I think a history will repeat itself
if we're not aware of what
happened and how it happened and keep our eyes open.
So this is a particularly challenging time
where there's a lot of expression of
hate in the United States and, intolerance.
And I think the more people can understand what
happened then and how
Hitler rose to power and what the results were.
The more likely it is that we as
a people or a society
can prevent that from happening
again because we'll see the signs.
>> And what do you hope that students will take away
from learning about your family's story in particular?
>> So I think you can think of
history as dates and battles and things like that,
and it's not for me, very alive.
And if you think about
history as people and what happened to people,
then I think understanding what happened
to real people helps create
a broader context and a set of understanding of
what was really going on in history.
The same way like I read things
about whether it's the personal librarian about
the woman who was J Pierpont Morgan's personal librarian,
who was a black woman who passed.
And what was her life like having to
keep up this facade for the day job, if you will.
And try to maneuver in society and what was the impact on
her and on her family or Carnegie's maid,
who was an African American woman who
was a mind behind some of the railroad stuff.
It just expands my sense.
So it would be my hope that people who might
listen to this or some of
the other recordings that you've done,
it would expand their understanding
of what happened to real people.
I think we can see
the films of what happened in the camps.
That was horrific.
And it's not the whole story.
So I think you don't know what
people's experience was and what it
is that affects what they
bring to their everyday interactions.
>> So is there anything I haven't
asked you about that you'd like to share?
>> I'm sure there's something,
but I'm really not sure what it is.
I feel like I said a lot about my family, about myself.
I guess what I would say is I'm really aware
of how amidst the challenges,
how fortunate my family was.
Okay. I guess I said some of this.
I'm really aware of just how gutsy my grandfather was
and appreciative of what
it must have taken to really be
able to do what he did to help those who he could help.
And appreciative of the impact that
it all had on my mom's family.
My mother, my grandmother, and my aunt.
>> Well, thank you so much for sharing your story
with us and for your time.
I really appreciate it. Thank you.
>> What an honor to be able to do this.