<Begin Segment 20>

BF: Well, I wanted to go back a bit to wartime, and I, because I realize during our pre-interview, we didn't talk about when you heard, when news started coming out about the Holocaust, and I wanted to know what that was like, hearing about what was going on.

AS: Well, I heard, I'm quite sure I was younger than thirteen, because it seems as though I can remember the house where we lived when I began to learn that something was going on in Germany that wasn't good for the... attacking Jews, and so in that time I was reading the newspaper, and so very concerned, and I guess, so I must have been maybe... so I was... let's think of age. Sometimes I get so confused. I was eleven, that would have been about... I would have been thirty -- I mean, it would have been 1935. I think there were stirrings already, but it became worse, especially after Kristallnacht, which was in 1938. So I guess especially after that time, there was more and more, so, but I know we had no idea things were as bad as they were, that there were these huge concentration camps where they were just killing many of the people. Six million. And yeah, so...

BF: So really, it wasn't 'til maybe even after the war ended.

AS: No, before the war ended.

BF: Before the war ended, you started getting the fuller picture.

AS: Getting a clearer picture, better picture. But you're right, it was after the war, after the camps were, our soldiers went there and released the people.

BF: What does that feel like? To feel so targeted?

AS: You realize how vulnerable we are, just because we're Jewish. And, of course, it also, they eliminated, I guess, the gypsies, and anyone who's homosexual, anybody who opposed the government, but for a whole people to be -- actually, in Lithuania, where my father was from, almost all the Jews were killed. That's right, there was a Japanese... I can see his name, but anyway, he was a diplomat from the Japanese, from Japan, and he issued... not permits, I don't know what it was called, but it authorized Jews to leave the country, to flee. So many Jews did, probably... well, anyway, some, I don't know how many, but there were quite a few that were able to get away -- of course, you also had to have the money then to get out -- and were saved. He, and then the Japanese -- well, probably got pressure from Germany or other governments, that he cannot do this. You cannot let your diplomat, ambassador, or whatever his title was, do that. And I read that he continued to do that, and I think his wife was helping him. Continued this until they made him, and they actually took him away. So that was an amazing story that most, I'm sure most people don't even know about.

BF: Yeah, I haven't, I hadn't heard that.

AS: Yeah, they've had an exhibit at the Asian museum.

BF: Oh, at Wing Luke?

AS: It was a few years ago. But, yeah.

BF: Yeah, slowly the stories of the people who were objectors, who stood up, are starting to finally come out, and that's encouraging, isn't it?

AS: Yeah. It is, it's very encouraging. And he has a daughter, there were -- at least one book has been written about his work, and he had a daughter that was here when they had the exhibit at the museum, and Jay spoke, and it was very interesting.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.