SONIA AND MIKE - AUNT LOTTE - INTERVIEW 2015 06 16
Lotte Bloom - Her
story of escaping Nazi Germany - Part 1
TRANSCRIPT
00:00
LOTTE BLOOM
And I left in 1940... in 1939.
00:05
MIKE
You left at '39. After that.
00:07
LOTTE BLOOM
After that.
00:08
MIKE
Okay.
00:10
LOTTE BLOOM
And Krystallnacht was actually in '38, because I left in '39
in May.
00:18
MIKE
Okay.
00:20
LOTTE BLOOM
And, um, we lived in this small town, where everybody knew
each other.
00:28
MIKE
Sure.
00:29
LOTTE BLOOM
And...
00:30
MIKE
And that was always Talheim...
00:31
LOTTE BLOOM
... that morning my mother was at the living room window,
and the...
00:40
MIKE
[aside] So this is
recording now. Can you ask them, too? Okay, fine.
00:44
LOTTE BLOOM
And we had one policeman in town. And my mother was at the
bedroom window and he called and said, "Rose, pack a small suitcase for
your husband. We have to come..."
01:00
MIKE
[aside] Please, ask
them to be quiet.
01:06
LOTTE BLOOM
[aside] You have to
ask them...
01:08
MIKE
[aside] I will. Pause
that.
01:10
LOTTE BLOOM
... a nice guy. He went to school with my mother, the
policeman. And my mother said, "Why should I pack a suitcase?" He
said, "Because we have to come and arrest your husband." And they,
he, and a few from the S. A., you know, the Party, came and arrested almost all
the Jewish men in our town and took them to Halbrun, which was the city nearest
us.
01:50
MIKE
I'm going to ask this, out of ignorance.
01:51
LOTTE BLOOM
Ask. Ask, ask, ask.
01:52
MIKE
And, that's all that it is. But, on what grounds were they
being arrested?
01:58
LOTTE BLOOM
They were arrested because a Jew killed... a Jewish man
killed a German. In Paris.
02:10
MIKE
Okay. So, therefore...
02:11
LOTTE BLOOM
That was the reason that they arrested Jews all over the
country, not just by us. And nobody knew anything, if they were going to send
them to a concentration camp, or what was going on. And...
02:33
MIKE
But... but, but prior to this, was there already tension?
02:40
LOTTE BLOOM
Oh, yes. Oh yes, that started quite early. Because, when I
went to high school, I got... I went by train, every morning, and in Germany,
they had a separate car for school children, because people that went to work
didn't want to be annoyed by the kids. And there were a few kids that got on. I
was the only girl at the car. And they started. That by the time I got off the train,
I didn't know my name anymore. I mean, with... it started really much earlier,
but not all over the town, like, people that knew my mother and father for
years, they still wanted to do business with my father, until he was not
allowed to, to do business anymore. It wasn't... it wasn't good, but it wasn't
that bad. And in our town, people that knew us were, most of them, still pretty
nice to us. It got very bad right after Kristallnacht for the simple reason
that a lot of even the decent Germans were afraid.
04:16
MIKE
So, they either had to go along...
04:18
LOTTE BLOOM
Some. Anyhow, my father was arrested.
04:24
MIKE
Your father's name was?
04:26
LOTTE BLOOM
Ludwig Levy.
04:28
MIKE
Ludwig Levy.
04:30
LOTTE BLOOM
And we had no idea what was going to happen to him. And they
arrested... must have been about 25 or 30 men, and, to this day, I don't know
why. We did not know anything, we... was scared to death. And it was just my
mother and I. And about seven o'clock, my father walked in the house. And he
had no idea why they let him go, because they didn't let anybody else go. He
was the only one that came home that night.
05:15
MIKE
Did he have any other type of status in the community, that
made him...?
05:22
LOTTE BLOOM
No, he was just known as a very nice, decent human being.
05:27
SONIA
What was his business?
05:30
LOTTE BLOOM
We had... my father used to... we had the store in the
house, but it was really not a store, more a storage for his merchandise. We
didn't do much business in town. He called on a lot of vinters and farmers,
his..., that..., make..., with materials, uh, for linens and bedding and, uh,
down quilts, and all that kind of stuff. And we had a very nice business. That
he built from scratch.
06:10
MIKE
But it sounds like, he was, he was let go that day, just by
pure luck.
06:16
LOTTE BLOOM
We don't know why he was let go. He didn't know why he was
let go. He said he thought the others were home, too. We didn't find out until
the next day that nobody came home but my father. And then, there was a rumor
going around. On the radio and whatever. That, that people were so upset that
they were going to do damage to the Jews. And my bedroom... we had a house, and
we had a house attached to our house, and my father bought it. He didn't want
to be a landlord. And I slept, usually, in the other house, which was... my
parents had a living room, bedroom, another bedroom that my grandmother had
when she lived with us, kitchen, and then the other house. My bedroom was
there.
07:26
MIKE
How old were you, at the time?
07:28
LOTTE BLOOM
1939? I was eight..., seventeen. And I said to my mother,
"I'm not sleeping back there tonight. Can I sleep with the couch?"
And my mother said, "Sure, why not?" And went to bed, maybe about ten
o'clock. At our house was... it had inside... you walked up about four steps,
and on top of the steps, we had a fixture that had a mirror and, like, an area
to put umbrellas in. And about twelve o'clock at night, they were knocking at
our door. Banging. "Open the door, you goddamn Jew!" You know it. And
my mother and father were in their bedroom and this went on and I went down and
I opened the door, which they would have broken down anyhow.
08:35
MIKE
Well, yeah.
08:37
LOTTE BLOOM
And as I opened the door, one of the guys, they all had, uh,
masks... not masks, but their faces covered, with scarves or whatever. And
there were about nine guys. And they shot that mirror. And my mother and father
thought that they had shot me. And they opened the door and they started to
beat up my father. And then they went into the kitchen, and they took out every
dish that was there and destroyed it. Then they went into the bedroom and cut
up all the bedding and... crystal... all over the place. Every... and then they
said... and they smacked my father. And they said if he was still in the house
next week they would come and kill us.
09:41
MIKE
They gave a whole week, though?
09:43
LOTTE BLOOM
That's what the guy.... Funny part was, the picture that I
showed you, of the school, that teacher was one of the guys.
09:54
MIKE
Really! And you had said, he was an okay guy.
09:55
LOTTE BLOOM
He practically... He practically lived in our house.
Because, the school... we were here, the school was over there, there was steps
going up. Whatever he needed, "Lotte, go home and get it from your
mother." You know, that kind. We, my mother and I, both recognized him by
his voice. And, I went to high school in Halbron, and I passed every morning,
on my way to school, a stand, a cab stand, but they were more like limousines,
you know. And there was one cab driver that always used to say to me in the
morning when he was there, "Good morning, Little Red Riding Hood!"
And one day he stopped me and he said to me, "You don't know my name. I
don't know your name. But I know you're Jewish." And he said, "Here
is my card. Give it to your mother or father and tell them, if they ever need
me, day or night, to call me." And I gave the card to my mother. And my
mother said to me, yeah, almost, that he would, you know. And we did call him,
that night, and he came, and he drove us to Stuttgart, to my uncle and aunt,
when they were expecting the same thing to happen there that we just...
11:35
MIKE
Okay, I was just going to ask, was the climate any better in
Stuttgart?
11:39
LOTTE BLOOM
And they had told us that night, if we would still be in the
house next week they'd come and kill us. We didn't know what to do. Once we got
to Stuttgart we couldn't stay there forever. We stayed there about five days
and we went home. And the house... were a shambles, I mean, you can't imagine
what it looked like. Just took lamps and threw them on the floor. Then they...
ah... it... cut up carpets and... unreal. And some of our neighbors were very,
very sympathetic. In fact, while that was going on that night, one person from
right across the street from us yelled out to them, "Why don't you leave
those people alone?" And they told him he should close his window or they
would do the same thing to him.
12:44
MIKE
So this was not a... specifically a Jewish or non-Jewish
area in which you lived? It was a pretty...
12:53
LOTTE BLOOM
We were about thirty-five, forty Jewish families.
12:59
MIKE
Out of...?
13:00
LOTTE BLOOM
And it... the town was about eight, nine hundred... maybe a
little more, I don't remember. But not a big town. And it was mostly farmers
and vineyards. It's a wine region. And a lot of people were... didn't look at
you anymore, if you were at the street. Didn't talk to you. And others were
very nice, still.
13:35
MIKE
Well, you have said before, you've told us the story of how,
one day, and I guess you were younger at the time, of playing with your friends
one day, and the very next day...
13:50
LOTTE BLOOM
They didn't know you.
13:52
MIKE
Right.
13:53
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah. That happened to quite a few. And we had a mayor in
the town that was a big, big Nazi, and used any opportunity to really make life
pretty miserable. And I went back to school and they started high school in
Germany, at that time, I don't know what it is now, I forgot to ask... you
paid, almost like college, you know, not as expensive, but it was not free.
They took our money. They did not correct our papers. They didn't call on any
Jewish kid. And so I left school at age seventeen. Because there was no sense
in staying there. And which my parents were trying desperately to get out of Germany.
But my cousin, who sent my papers, he just opened an office as a doctor and
didn't have that kind of money because you had to be able to support the family
here for... that... how long.
15:22
MIKE
That's right.
15:24
LOTTE BLOOM
And...
15:24
MIKE
These were your exit papers?
15:27
LOTTE BLOOM
And I went to Stuttgart to go to the, um, uh, American Consul
to see how my papers were coming along. My uncle in Stuttgart went with me. And
they said that things had changed and that they go by numbers and that they
were only allowing, say, five, six thousand people from that whole area to
immigrate. The Americans weren't so good, either, believe me. And so I...
16:05
MIKE
The Americans were making it difficult?
16:08
LOTTE BLOOM
Yes.
16:08
MIKE
Really! Wow.
16:09
LOTTE BLOOM
Very difficult. In the consul, some of these consul people
were as much Nazis almost as... hmm. So, I said, "Then, can I have a
number?" They gave me a number. And said, "Can I have a number for my
parents?" "They have to come." So my mother and father went two
days later. My number was five thousand something. Theirs was twenty-two
thousand, which meant that there would be a three, four years difference. And
then, first, they decided I shouldn't go, I should stay with them. Then my mother
and father decided it might be easier for them to get out, you know, if I was
already in America. My cousin wrote that. And so I left in May of 1939. And
each letter that I got from home was worse than the one before. That, all kinds
of things... with the exception, my mother kept writing, we had a next-door
neighbor that had a little grocery store. And, the... her... the woman... it
belonged to the husband's mother, and she got very ill, and the daughter-in-law
was a lovely, lovely lady. And she ran the store. And my mother used to write,
if it wasn't for Katy, that they would starve... And then the letters stopped.
And my mother wrote, in the last letter, somebody from her side of the family
was deported about two or three months before.
18:18
MIKE
Deported? To where?
18:20
LOTTE BLOOM
Poland.
18:21
MIKE
Poland.
18:22
LOTTE BLOOM
That's what they were told. That they were going, they were
going to "resettle in Poland." And when, when the... How would you
say? My mother wrote that she thinks they're going to have to visit "[indestinguishable
name]." Which, you know, you had to be very careful what you said in the
letter because they checked that... many times. And then I didn't hear anything
at all, for... 'til 1942, I think.
19:07
MIKE
At that point, you were already settled, here?
19:11
LOTTE BLOOM
I was... I came here in '39.
19:13
MIKE
Right.
19:15
LOTTE BLOOM
And then I got notified later that my parents were sent to
Riga. And that both died. And immediately after the war was over, I got a
letter from a man that used to be, in public school, sitting directly in back
of me. And obviously, he was not a Nazi, he was in the army. And he wrote to
me, and he called me several times on the phone, and was very, very... Eric.
And then, I... we were invited to Germany.
20:22
MIKE
When is this?
20:24
LOTTE BLOOM
That was...
20:26
DIANE
Sixties?
20:27
LOTTE BLOOM
... about nineteen-eighty...
20:28
DIANE
Sixties? Eighties?
20:31
LOTTE BLOOM
1984 or something. No, much later than that, Diane.
20:37
MIKE
By this same person? This Eric?
20:39
LOTTE BLOOM
No, from the town.
20:42
MIKE
Oh, that's...
20:42
LOTTE BLOOM
From the city.
20:44
MIKE
Well, hey, if we could just go back for a second, uh, this
Eric, how did he find you?
20:51
LOTTE BLOOM
I don't know. He... oh... they knew where I was going, and
they had, Germany had records, going back to the beginning of the world. And he
called me quite a few times, and he said, did I want to come and visit? And I
kept saying, no, I don't want to ever set foot in... And then my cousin Flora,
who lived, by then, in Baltimore, she used to live in Brooklyn, and she said
she was going to, where she came from. And that was where my father was born,
in that town. And when she came back, she said, "Lotte, go. It's like,
puts sort of a... an end to it.
21:46
MIKE
Closure.
21:47
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah. And they invited me, not Talheim, but Halbron, where I
went to school. And we went. And they paid, my fare, Sid had to pay for his
fare. And the hotel, of course, whether there was one or two people in the
hotel didn't make any difference, they paid all expenses.
22:18
MIKE
Wow.
22:19
LOTTE BLOOM
And we were treated like royalty. We were 87 people, from
all different parts of the world. There was a woman there, with her
grandmother, from Israel. There was a woman there who had a sheep farm in
Australia, with her husband. I mean, it was "United Nations." They
did not know what to do for us. In every respect that you can think of. And, of
course, nobody was a Nazi. It was...
23:10
MIKE
So, was it, as though that never happened?
23:14
LOTTE BLOOM
They did not talk about it. At all. Now, Eric used to say to
me, be very careful, this guy was a Nazi, a big shot, and this and that, and, a
few people. And then they took us on a cruise along the Rhine, uh uh, the
Neckar. And, uh, some... it was so strange, so many strange thing... We were on
that trip and when we came back to the hotel, one of the waiters said,
"Are you Mrs. Bloom?" I said, "Yes." He says, "Mrs.
So-and-So was looking for you and she said she would be back in the early
afternoon. Make sure that you meet her." And I figured, she must be... God
knew... and I said, "We'll probably be back about so-and-so." This
woman had written me a note and gave it to the waiter, she can't wait to see me
because she remembers me with my black pigtails.
24:38
MIKE
Black? Black pigtails?
24:40
LOTTE BLOOM
And I said to Sid, she must be crazy. And she had left two
bottles of wine for us in the room.
24:52
MIKE
Well, I think you have to meet her then.
24:55
LOTTE BLOOM
And we did. And I said to her, you got me mixed up with
somebody else. I said, I was never, I never had dark hair. I've had red hair,
like I still do. She said, "I could've sworn... I don't know, then, who I
got you mixed up with."
25:18
MIKE
Did you have to give the wine back?
25:19
LOTTE BLOOM
And the woman was, apparently, millionaires. They had...
uh... wood... I don't know what you call it, like mills. That she had an
apartment in Florida. She had a house in, uh, in the French Riviera someplace.
I mean, I could tell from the beginning when the waiter said to us, "Oh,
please," you know, "Mrs. So-and-So." And she could've sworn that
I was, who. She said, "It doesn't make any difference, but I wanted to
meet you anyway." So. Whatever. Every place we went, they did not know
what to do. The Bürgermeister, which is the mayor, came and picked us up and
took us to town, which is six kilometers, and, to a very nice place for lunch,
and...
26:33
MIKE
Yeah, that was your first...
26:33
LOTTE BLOOM
... all of a sudden, girls, that were older than I,
invited... One girl invited us to her house. She had, like, a villa. Eric's
daughter, her... had a swimming pool in town. "I have a swimming pool"
was, like, unheard of. And Eric drove us all over. Then we went to Heidelburg,
and they... Sid said to me, "He's meshugenah, the way he drives!" It
was on the Autobahn. There was no speed limit.
27:10
MIKE
Oh, the Autobahn's a complete... you just have at it.
27:13
LOTTE BLOOM
And, then, the funny part was, Eric kept saying to me... The
woman that was so good to my parents, her name was Katy. And she had been,
while we were in Germany... her daughter... had married an American soldier.
And they were in... Georgia, I think... and Eric kept saying to me, "Lotte,
she has silverware that belongs to you." I said, I was with my mother when
we gave up all our silver... we had to give everything up... jewelry...
anything. And, uh... we came back to the states, and Eric kept calling me, and
calling me, did I get in touch with the daughter? He gave me the address.
Finally, I got in touch with the daughter and I called her, and she said,
"Mrs. Bloom, I'm so happy to hear from you. I mailed you the package with
the silverware and it came back to me. I must've had the wrong address."
And a week later, I get five spoons, five knives, and five forks with my
initials on them.
28:50
MIKE
Which you still have.
28:52
LOTTE BLOOM
Which her grandmother had kept. And she said to me, "My
grandma said, 'You can look at it, but it belongs to Lotte. She'll come and get
it one day.'" And then Eric called again, and he said, "There's a man
here. He's a high school... a retired high school teacher, and he is very
interested in what went on after you left Germany, and how most of the Jewish
people were able to," you know, "find their way around. Would you
talk to him?" I said, "Yes. Why not?" And an hour later, Deter
called me.
29:40
MIKE
Deter's last name?
29:42
LOTTE BLOOM
Gaa. "G." "A." "A." He is of
Scotch descent. And he was this high school teacher in the school that I went
to. When I went, it was an all-girls school. When he worked there as a teacher,
he was... it was mixed. I mean, co-ed. And I... he said to me, "Can you
help me with this?" I said, I must tell you, my German isn't that good
anymore." He said, "That's not a problem. I'm a retired English
school teacher." And we kept corresponding back and forth. And one day he
called me up and he said, "Would you mind if I come and visit?" I
said, "No, I'd love it." And we went to the airport to pick him up
and the plane had come in early and he was already in a motel in Sheepshead
Bay.
30:45
MIKE
A motel in Sheepshead Bay.
30:47
LOTTE BLOOM
There are a few.
30:48
MIKE
Are there?
30:48
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah.
30:49
MIKE
Huh!
30:51
LOTTE BLOOM
And he came every day that he was here, and he took notes of
what I did, and this, and that, and the next thing. And he knew a lot more
about what happened to my parents. And he was here about four days. Paid for it
himself, nobody put... he was just very... and then he had the article in the
local paper about me, and the thing... and he sent me that. And then he decided
to come for my birthday, he and his wife.
31:33
MIKE
That's where we met him.
31:34
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah.
31:35
MIKE
At your ninetieth birthday.
31:35
LOTTE BLOOM
Very nice.
31:36
MIKE
Very.
31:38
LOTTE BLOOM
I'm still in contact with him. And, uh... And here I am!
31:46
MIKE
Yes, you are. With...
31:50
LOTTE BLOOM
My first job was taking care of a little boy, in Rockville
Center, like a nanny. I needed a
nanny, believe me. I was so innocent. And so... backward.
32:10
MIKE
How was your, uh, your grasp of English?
32:14
LOTTE BLOOM
I had English lessons, private lessons, because the school I
went to, they had three years of English and three years of French. My luck
was, the first three years we had French.
32:32
MIKE
Yeah, saw that.
32:33
LOTTE BLOOM
So I had private lessons in English, and my cousins, they were
all married to Americans. And my cousin said right away to me, "Lotte, try
as much to speak English as you can."
32:52
(?)
That was here, in the United States.
32:54
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah. I went to my cousin, they lived in Newark, at the
time.
33:01
(?)
And that was the first place you went to when you came?
33:03
LOTTE BLOOM
Newark. My cousin was married... my cousin... two cousins,
to doctors. And I stayed with my cousin Heddy, who, they had no children, and
he had just come back from the war. He was stationed near... in Hawaii, as a
doctor, and he said, "Don't let anyone say, 'It's beautiful there.' It
is," he said, "but ten... ten months of sunshine is a lot."
33:38
MIKE
Yeah. It sounds awful!
33:42
LOTTE BLOOM
They were very nice. And then, I was looking for a job. And
I don't remember anymore how, I think it was in a Jewish newspaper, that my
cousin Heddy, the one that I was staying with, got. And they were looking for a
young person to take care of a... I think he was four and a half, or five years
old. And we went to New York, to the man's office. I never met his wife, I only
met him. And my cousin, he saw that I could understand English, but not that
great yet, and he said he had to talk it over to... with his wife. And about
two days later, they called me. And, of all my experience, that was the
scariest thing that I went through. It never dawned on me, until I got on the
train, where is that man taking me? I didn't know. And, I was petrified. And,
uh, they were very nice people. She came from Brooklyn, from very religious
people. He came from Baltimore, went to synagogue for his wife's sake, every
Saturday and every Friday night, and then went horseback riding. They
manufactured men's, as well as some women's clothing in Baltimore. And his
brother was married to a refugee girl from not far from where I came from, in
Baltimore. And the boy that I took care of was adopted. They had no children.
And, I didn't know he was adopted. And one evening, it's so funny, I gave him a
bath, and he said to me, "Lotte, do you know, I wasn't born?" So I
said to him, "What do you mean, you weren't born?" "I mean, I
didn't come out from my mommy's stomach." And I was hysterical, laughing.
And Mrs. Hershey came back, she said, "What's going on here?" And I
told her. She said, "Lotte, I thought we told you that Arthur is
adopted." I said, "No, you just told me he wasn't born." And
then, I left there, because my mother was still living at that time, in
Germany, and wanted me to move to Philadelphia, to her cousin. She would feel
more at ease, if I would be with family.
37:07
(?)
What year was this? What year?
37:10
LOTTE BLOOM
Nine... just before they were deported, 1941, I think, '41
or '42. I think I have it in that book. But, anyhow, they were very much not
nice to me.
37:29
SONIA
In Philadelphia.
37:29
LOTTE BLOOM
And I was very sorry that I... that I left that job. But,
you know, somebody looked out for me. Anyway. I got a job with German Jews that
were... Hitler overlooked them. They should not have deserved to live.
Terrible, terrible people. They had a very nice business, uh, selling dresses,
coats, suits, and I got a job there as a salesgirl. And they wanted me to tell cust-...
it was in a German neighborhood, that I was, because I had an accent, and my
English was not as good as my German, and I should tell them that I lived in
Germany and my grandmother raised me. "Don't tell them you're
Jewish." I said, "I won't do that." I said, "I lost my
parents because we're Jewish and I'm not going to do that." And one day,
must've been about August or so, a woman came in, a German Jewish woman, with
her daughter, and I think I sold her a dress, the daughter a dress. And she
said to me, "Where do you come from?" And I told her. They came from
a totally different part of Germany.
39:13
MIKE
Were you speaking in English or German?
39:16
LOTTE BLOOM
Both. And, uh, she said to me, "What are you doing for
the holidays?" I said, "I don't know yet." She says, "Yes,
you know. You're coming to my house." And she invited me, and her daughter
became my closest friend. She was married, she was a year older than I, and her
parents and she and her husband, and they had a little girl by then, lived
there, and her little girl is now my best friend.
39:54
MIKE
Who was that?
39:55
LOTTE BLOOM
Susan. She was at my party. And she married an extremely
wealthy man. She sent me a few months ago five thousand dollars. And anyhow,
her mother, my friend, her name was Lotte, too, died at age 42 of cancer. And
her husband was not the nicest man. And, but, he kept in touch with me and
Susan got in touch with me. She had three, they had three children: a boy...
Susan, the oldest; the boy; and the
younger daughter. The younger daughter was about ten or eleven years old when
her mother died. And they were like family. And, I sometimes wonder, who was
looking out for me? Then I moved, then my friend Susan's parents moved to
Pittsburgh, and I moved with them.
41:31
MIKE
I never knew how you got to Pittsburgh.
41:32
LOTTE BLOOM
That's when I met Sid.
41:34
MIKE
When was that?
41:37
LOTTE BLOOM
Nineteen... we got married... wait a minute, 1954.
41:43
MIKE
Fifty-four.
41:48
LOTTE BLOOM
That's my story!
41:50
MIKE
Well, that's part of it. That's for sure. A hell of a story,
and... and...
41:57
LOTTE BLOOM
Mike, it wasn't easy. Believe me.
42:00
MIKE
No. No. And, I am... your attention to detail, your... your
recollection for these details...
42:13
LOTTE BLOOM
Those things you can't forget. No. You know, it... it was
like a whole new life, for me. And, in a strange country. And really, my
cousins were very nice. They lived in Jersey, I was in Long Island. And my...
Elaine's parents lived in Washington Heights and I used to see them. And her...
her father, uh, Elaine's grandparents, were living here in the United... and my
father's brothers. And they got out because Elaine's father, they lived
directly on the French border, and they just moved, to France, and from there
to America. And they were allowed, at that time, to take some of their money
out with them, so they were pretty comfortable.
43:25
MIKE
That was lucky. I mean, but, but really...
43:27
LOTTE BLOOM
My father was part... part of six brothers that worked in
the army together, all six of them.
43:39
MIKE
This was World War I.
43:40
LOTTE BLOOM
World War I. And I gave Deter the Iron Cross that my father
had.
43:48
MIKE
Really! Wow.
43:49
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah. They gave it to him. And he wrote it up in the Ger-...
German newspaper and he sent me a copy of it. I don't know what happened to it.
And... I'm still here!
44:06
MIKE
Yeah, you are. You're here for a purpose. I mean...
44:11
LOTTE BLOOM
Mike, I want to tell you. You don't know what you can take
care of, when you're forced to.
44:22
MIKE
It's true.
44:23
LOTTE BLOOM
When I came here, I came on the last trip that the American
ship, that I was on, made to Germany.
44:35
MIKE
Do you remember the name of the ship? What ship was it?
44:39
LOTTE BLOOM
The, uh, Manhattan.
44:44
MIKE
Okay. There's some irony to that.
44:46
LOTTE BLOOM
Yeah. I was seasick, from day one. I wouldn't go on... on...
44:51
MIKE
Can we get you on the Staten Island Ferry, now?
44:54
LOTTE BLOOM
That, I can do.
44:55
MIKE
Okay. That's good. But, you know, you were put in
circumstances, and you had no choice but to rise to them and... and then
overcome.
45:08
LOTTE BLOOM
It was... I tell you, it was very, very difficult. Because,
if I look at the kids today, sixteen, seventeen years old, they are... I was
like a ten-year-old. I knew nothing, and lived such a sheltered life. I mean,
you didn't go anyplace, unless it was with your parents. It was...
45:42
MIKE
It was a different world. You were probably no different
than any other ten-year-old girl in Talheim.
45:51
LOTTE BLOOM
I really was. I felt, like, that the American girls that
were fourteen, fifteen years old were much older than I, in many, many, many
ways.
46:06
MIKE
Right. The American girls.
46:08
LOTTE BLOOM
Yes.
46:09
MIKE
But, girls your age from Talheim were probably very similar
to you.
46:18
LOTTE BLOOM
I'm sure.
46:18
MIKE
Because you all had the same access to...
46:23
LOTTE BLOOM
Same background, more or less.
46:25
MIKE
Right. Exactly. It was just a completely different kind of
an upbringing.
46:30
LOTTE BLOOM
Especially, we lived in this small town, where everybody
knew everybody else.
46:39
MIKE
Kind of like living here.
46:40
LOTTE BLOOM
It's... more so. If my grandmother was, who lived with us,
my mother's mother. Oh, according to her, we lived with her. And, she was...
"clean" is not the word. "Crazy!" Nobody could clean her
room, nobody could do anything for her. If she went down the steps, she dusted
the bannister going down. When she came up the steps, she dusted it going up.
And... and... it was... my mother didn't fit in, to our little town. She was...
my grandmother became a widow quite young, and my mother went to work. She got
a job, as a typist and a stenographer, which was almost unheard of in these
days, and she was... a pretty bright lady. She should've pushed my father a
little more, to leave Germany. But, unfortunately, his business was good, to
the last day. And, we had people that you would not believe, that lived on the
farm, and my father didn't go there anymore, and they were a little backward
about certain things. On a Sunday morning, a woman and her sister came on a
motorcycle with a sidecar. "Mom sent us."They were in their twenties,
late twenties. "Mr. Levy hasn't come to see us and we still owe him some
money." And my father said, "I can't see you anymore. I'm not allowed
to do business with you. And besides, I got a letter from your brother that if
I still insist on visiting his mother," it wouldn't be a good idea for
him. And my father helped that guy to open a business. Never charged him a
nickel. Took him two or three years to pay it back. I mean, he had... he was
fortunate and misfortunate that his business was good, until it couldn't be run
anymore. And then it was too late.
49:47
MIKE
Too late. Was there any consideration...? Obviously, your
mother said, "Let's get out of here," but...
49:54
LOTTE BLOOM
The mother... the mother was a wonderful lady. And, you had
to see... my father had had the heart attack. They came. They brought stuff from
their farm that we couldn't even use, half of it, because they heard Mr. Levy
was sick. He had a very good reputation. He was a very honest, honorable man.
50:26
MIKE
[aside] Stop picking.
50:32
LOTTE BLOOM
I gave you a headache.
50:36
MIKE
Not at all.
50:41
(?)
[aside] You have...
ten minutes.
50:42
[end]
