First Person with Frank Lieberman
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BILL BENSON:
Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My name is Bill Benson and I am the host of the Museum’s public program, First Person. Thank you for joining us today. We are in our tenth year of the First Person program. Our first person today is Mr. Frank Liebermann, whom we shall meet shortly.
This 2009 season of First Person is made possible through the generosity of the Louis and Dora Smith Foundation to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person and today I’d like to acknowledge that Mr. Louis Smith is with us in our audience right here in the front. [applause]
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their first-hand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest serves as a volunteer here with this Museum. We will have a First Person program each Tuesday until the end of July and also on Wednesdays until the end of August. The Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org provides a list of our upcoming First Person guests.
This year we are offering a new feature associated with the First Person program. Excerpts from our conversations with survivors are available as podcasts on the Museum’s website. A number of them from this year have already been posted and Frank’s will be posted on the website in the coming weeks. The First Person podcast join two other Museum podcast series: Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcasts are also available through iTunes.
As most of you know, on June 10 a man came to this museum and tragically took the life of Officer Stephen Johns. Officer Johns, in giving his life, and his fellow officers, stopped the gunman before he could cause more harm to others and create more horror in this institution. We ask you to join us for a moment of silence in honor of Officer Johns and his family.
Our first person today Mr. Frank Liebermann will share his first person account of his experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor for about 40 minutes. Depending on time we hope to have an opportunity for you to ask questions of Frank. Before you are introduced to him I have several requests of you and a couple of announcements. First, if possible we ask that you stay seated throughout our one hour program. That way we minimize any disruptions for Frank as he speaks.
Second, if we do have an opportunity for question and answers at the end of the program and you have a question I ask that you make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat the question so everyone in the room hears it and then Frank will respond to your question. If you have a cell phone or a pager that has not yet been turned off we ask that you do that now.
If you have passes for the Permanent Exhibition today please know that they are good for the end of the afternoon so please feel free to stay comfortably with us until 2:00 until our program ends and then you can go to the Permanent Exhibition.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims; six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti, or Gypsies, people with mental retardation and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany.
More than 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, anti-Semitism, and genocide still threaten our world as we so dramatically saw on the 10th of June. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur. What you are about to hear from Frank Liebermann is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with Frank’s introduction.
We begin with this photograph of Frank Liebermann. He was born in Gleiwitz, Germany, which is now in Poland in 1929. He was the only child of Hans and Lotte Liebermann. On the left we see Hans Lieberman and on the right we see Lotte and her infant son Frank. And I think focus for a moment on the photograph on the left hand side and when Frank steps up on the stage I think you will note the resemblance. Both of Frank's parents families had lived in this part of Germany, which is now Poland, for several generations. Frank is pictured with his paternal grandparents, Bernard and Jenny Liebermann.
Hitler came to power in 1933, and when Frank began school in 1935 Jewish students were separated from the non- Jewish students and fear of antisemitic attacks became frequent. Pictured is Frank's first grade class on the first day of school. Frank is pictured in the 2nd row, the fourth from the right and I think you’ll see the arrow, you can see the cursor it’s right on Frank right there. If you are curious the cones they are holding are filed with sweets in order to make school sweet.
In 1936 Frank's father was no longer allowed to practice medicine as a result of anti-Jewish laws. In 1938 the family began trying to obtain visas to come to the United States. In fact they had been trying to do that prior to 1938. Hans traveled first and Frank and his mother followed a few months later in October of 1938. Here we see Frank's mother's ticket to the ship they took to the United States.
The Liebermann family settled in Ohio and Frank went on to graduate from Western Reserve, now Case Western Reserve University, in 1950 with a degree in Chemistry. We close our slideshow with a contemporary photo of Frank Liebermann.
1950 was a big year for Frank. Not only did he graduate from college to start a long and successful career in the textile industry in New York City but he also married Marianne, his wife of nearly 59 years. Frank would work in textile manufacturing until 1992 when he and Marianne moved to the Washington D.C. area to be closer to their children. Frank would last just 3 months in retirement before going into the travel business which he continues today, specializing in Europe an U.S. travel, including Alaska.
Frank and Marianne have 3 children, 2 daughters and a son. Their daughters Nancy and Joan live here in the Washington D.C. area and their son Jerry is in Seattle. They have 5 grandchildren, with the youngest about to start college this coming September. I am pleased to let you know that Frank’s wife Marianne and their 2 daughters Nancy and Joan are with us today. Marianne, Nancy, and Joan if you wouldn’t mind letting folks know you are down here. [applause]
Frank volunteers in the Museum’s Visitor Services. As part of his responsibilities he speaks with various groups that are visiting the Museum. He has also spoken to wounded veterans at Walter Reed Military Hospital. With that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mr. Frank Liebermann. [applause]
BILL BENSON:
Frank, thanks for joining us and for your willingness to be our first person today. We have a great deal to cover so we’ll begin and let me start first, Frank, by asking you about your early life. You said to me that your personal earliest memories date to about 1934 when you were just 5 years old. You said that at that time all in all it was a good time for your parents. Tell us why that was so and a little bit about your family, your community, and yourself in those first years of your life.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
We lived in Gleiwitz. We moved by about 30-40 miles from my father’s parents and in one direction my mother’s in the other. We had a pretty close family relationship. My father was a surgeon. In fact, one of the first things I remember- 1933 we had the luxury of getting a car which was most unusual in those times. We lived in an apartment on the main street near the center of town, which is quite common in Europe. It’s built on public transportation and everything was easy to get to.
I remember quite a few instances where we regularly went to both parents. My father’s parents had a small hardware store. They struggled pretty much but they put both sons through school. My father became a physician, my father’s younger brother became an economist, although, he was the first one hit with the loss of the job. Working for the government meant being fired in 1933.
My mother’s family celebrated their 100th anniversary of the wholesale leather business with a retail outlet in 1933 and I think each of my kids still have pencils commemorating the event.
BILL BENSON:
The 100th anniversary?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
The 100th anniversary. They were quite well off. I remember we would regularly go on outings. They took my parents on trips and one of the things I always remember is Europe has a tradition of eating a large variety of mushrooms, which are relatively uncommon here but you see more of them now. Some of them are quite exotic. The family used to go out into the forest and pick them and at the end of the picking, all the results were put on the table and since some of them were poisonous, anybody in the family could have a veto any particular mushrooms. We always enjoyed them and had no ill effects from them. This was typical of the type of family which we had. They had a car before my parents did so…
BILL BENSON:
Frank, didn’t a couple of your uncles have motorcycles at that time?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
And my grandmother never slept after that.
BILL BENSON:
Some things never change maybe.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Exactly.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, your family, or at least a portion of your family, had been able to trace your roots back several hundred years to that part of Germany and now Poland, right?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Yes, my grandfather became a genealogist. He made it his business to go to virtually all the cemeteries in the area and for various court houses to trace records. I have to say that the Germans were fantastic in keeping records and paying attention to details. It’s almost a national trait. He was able to trace the family back to a village about 15 miles away called Langendorf back to about the early 1700s and also did trace one of the Orgler which was my mother’s maiden name, who married a Gratz who were one of the early immigrants to Philadelphia and were pretty leading citizens in Philadelphia, partly financed George Washington and started Gratz College in Philadelphia.
When we started looking for relatives to try to get visas for the United States one of the jobs my father had to do was to go to the archives in Philadelphia and he found out that unfortunately Rebecca Gratz never married and her brother moved west and we couldn’t find any trace after he settled in Louisville.
BILL BENSON:
And that of course, later in the search for affidavits that was…
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
That was one of the things he was looking for.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, tell us a little bit about your early schooling. We noted in the opening commentary on the slides that there was a great deal of antisemitism at that time and you were experiencing it in the schools.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
We had three rooms for the first, second, and third grades. It was segregated within the school and the most scary part of the day was for recess. Everybody had to leave the building around lunch time for about half an hour. We generally tried to navigate between the boys and girls were separated on one side and the other side of the yard. Basically, we tried to navigate in between were we had supervision and basically were not physically harmed but it was most unpleasant part of the school day.
BILL BENSON:
When you said you had three rooms for your grades, that was three rooms for the Jewish students in a larger public school?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
That’s correct in a large school.
BILL BENSON:
In 1936 Frank, circumstances for your parents turned more ominous and became more difficult if not outright dangerous for your parents and for other Jews in your community. What changed in 1936 and why was that particularly significant for your family?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
If you study history, and I am sure some of you have, after World War II there was a Crimean War.
BILL BENSON:
After the First World War?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Rather, after World War I. I am sorry, after 1918 there was war around the Crimea and at the end of that Poland was established partly out of German territory and partly out of Russian territory. Since the borders were artificial, the minorities were protected for 15 years. The treaty was made, to establish Poland, was made in 1921and for 15 years each country promised to protect minorities in order to give them enough of a chance to change residencies and go to the areas where they wanted to live. We were included in the protected minorities during that time, which was over in the summer of 1936. A lot of the laws of Germany were implemented right after 1933 when civil rights were taken away, when some of the things which only happened after ’36 in Gleiwitz already started gradually occurring throughout Germany. In fact, for that reason, quite a few physicians left earlier, but we still felt relatively safe until 1936 and then it hit fairly hard.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about some of those changes, the new laws that were passed that really had a profound effect on your family.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
We already knew that for instance, we couldn’t use public facilities. One of the things that my parents insisted on, early in 1936 is that I learn how to swim because the swimming pool would be closed when that happened. All facilities were already being closed elsewhere.
BILL BENSON:
Closed to Jews?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Yes. We couldn’t use parks. Stores were boycotted. As I said hospital privileges were delayed rather were rescinded. My father’s brother lost his job and went from a government economist and found a job in Austria as an assistant manager of a department store. Everybody wanted to make a living and wanted to do the best he could.
BILL BENSON:
For your father losing hospital privileges and other changes essentially meant he could not practice medicine?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
That’s correct. Germany had socialized medicine, which means that the government basically paid for all the patients. Therefore, they stopped doing that so that he was still treating some people who wanted…whom he knew but even at that point, after 1936 an SA Nazi guard stood in front of the office and asked anybody who was coming upstairs what he was doing and threatening them with loss of jobs and other punishments so that for all practical purposes he knew in 1936 that he couldn’t make a living.
BILL BENSON:
In the early part of the year, 1936, I think in January. Your mother took a trip to Israel, with I think maybe two of her brothers.
FRANK LIEBERMANN::
With one of her brothers…
BILL BENSON:
Would you tell us about that trip?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Again, everybody was looking for what the alternatives were. Basically nobody wanted to move but it started to look like a strong possibility. They checked out Palestine which it was called at that time. That which, by the way comes from the Roman term which was given after the Diaspora in 70 A.D. My mother found out that there was about 1 doctor for every hundred people. The only way you could make a living in Israel at that time was to work in a kibbutz, become farmers and it would have meant a complete change of our life and my father was dedicated to his practice of medicine and that was not an option.
BILL BENSON:
And as a result he had to start thinking about other possibilities. Where else did he look at that time?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Obviously, the United States. They wanted to get out of Europe. Another place which would take people was South Africa but for reasons of comfort the United States was I would say their primary ambition.
BILL BENSON:
And at some point, a little bit later we’ll talk about…your father made a trip to the United States to further look into that. Before we get into that a couple of other questions, Frank. One is, you told me about I believe it’s Stürmer and I am probably not saying that correctly but tell us a little bit about that.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Alright, in summer of 1936 my father and three of his colleagues decided it would be a good idea to get out of Germany because nobody knew what would happen at the end of the treaty. Since we expected catch up to be played during that time, on what didn’t take place in Gleiwitz which already happened in the major cities like Berlin and other larger cities further into Germany.
I remember we went to an island in the Baltic and when we came back the scene changes quite a bit. I remember it, again I was 7 but things which I could see. Item number one, there were limits on where I could go. I could never, I couldn’t go to the movies. We couldn’t go to the parks. We couldn’t go swimming. I was told do this do that but be careful.
BILL BENSON:
And everywhere you went…
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Also, some windows were broken when we came back in storefronts now it’s Jewish stores across the street from us. My father couldn’t use the hospital anymore. You had those guards and when we started school we were told that we’d be dismissed 5 minutes early and that we need to go home right away in order to keep us from being attacked.
BILL BENSON:
So 5 minutes before the rest of the students?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Correct so that we’d be safe.
BILL BENSON:
Basically to give you a head start.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
We came 5 minutes late and left 5 minutes early so we wouldn’t be confronted with the rest of the student body.
BILL BENSON:
And Frank you told me that at that time everywhere you looked there was fierce antisemitic propaganda being posted.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
I forgot, I am sorry, also the main street corners had postings of Der Stürmer which means “a storm.” It’s hard to translate again. It’s basically, it means call it “the coming storm” or whatever it’s called, which was entirely an antisemitic paper which showed caricatures, ugly caricatures, stories of harm being done to children, harm being done all by Jews against Germany. [It] just portrayed everybody as being extremely ugly and being people to stay away from. They were published on a weekly basis and were put kind of on stands. I don’t know if you have ever seen it. It’s behind glass so that if anybody was at a bus stop they could immediate…they had some good reading material in order to educate them.
BILL BENSON:
Like we see advertisements at bus stations today only it was horrible propaganda.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Exactly, yes.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, your family would live under those conditions, and they worsened, until 1938. In January of 1938 your father would make a trip to the United States that would make it possible for him to leave for the United States later that year and for you and your mother to follow. Tell us about the events that led up to your father making that trip and then to the United State initially and then how he was able to arrange to leave to the United States, I mean for the United States.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
I mentioned that my grandfather was a genealogist. He also knew from his father that his father had been approached by his sister’s husband in the beginning of the early 1900s, I think around 1904- 1905 that he needed about 5,000 dollar, which was something like 20,000 dollars. No a little bit…about 10 let’s say. But, this was in 1900.
BILL BENSON:
So a huge sum.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
20,000 dollars in 1900 was…
BILL BENSON:
A princely sum.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Yes. I don’t know if it bought the Empire State Building, but. This was supposed to be for one week and he disappeared, never came back and almost caused the firm to go into bankruptcy. They recovered from it but he traced this person to New York and he told my father, “Look, I have heard he is doing very well. He works. He is a vice president of an aviation company. I think it would be worthwhile to visit him to see if you can get an affidavit to come to the United States.”
Now let me explain what an affidavit is. You have probably heard the term quite often. An affidavit is basically a guarantee that you’ll do something. The affidavit which one had to get in order to be put on the waiting list for the United States is a guarantee that you won’t be on welfare for one year. Please keep in mind this was during the Depression, 1938 was a second dip. Probably about as low a point as almost as 1933 and ’34.
BILL BENSON:
In the U.S.?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
In the U.S. He did look him up and he did get an affidavit to cover my father, and my mother, and me. Nobody mentioned anything that had happened previously. But, we were grateful for a chance to get out.
He came back again in January and we got a number from the United States in our application for a visa to immigrate.
BILL BENSON:
But it still took some time?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Oh, I have one other thing to add. What happened in 1936 that all Jewish bank accounts were frozen. The government determined how much you needed in order to live. Anything else would be a felony if you tried to withdraw it. So that basically you didn’t have use of your own money.
BILL BENSON:
That became especially significant when you were thinking about leaving the country. So, in order for your father and then you and your mother to leave, what was your father able to do about finances?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Well, this is a reason, we got our visa at the end of June, 1938. Everybody was allowed to take out 10 marks, which is 2 dollars and 50 cents.
BILL BENSON:
Period?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Period. However, if you took a German boat you got a fairly generous working allow…rather spending allowance if you went first class. We could prove that we needed the money for the ticket. So we could take out…he took a first class ticket and the working allowance rather a spending allowance which of course he didn’t spend and used it to live. He studied for the state boards. Every doctor has to take certification from the state where he plans to practice. One of the reasons why he picked Ohio is that Ohio was passing one half of immigrants taking the test.
In New York you had a similar situation that you had in Tel Aviv. Now it’s that there was an excess of doctors and at that time it was very different from what it is now. Medical practice was really controlled by the general practitioners. If the surgery had to be done they were demanding fee splitting-that they get 90% and the surgeon gets 10%.
BILL BENSON:
The medical societies got 90%?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
The GPs.
BILL BENSON:
The GPs. Okay.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Therefore, he wanted no part of New York and in Ohio it felt he can make a decent living and practice on his own.
BILL BENSON:
And at 50/50 he figured his odds were pretty good of trying to pass.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, before your father left, tell us about the situation with the U.S. consul’s office and Fräulein Schmidt.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Unfortunately, in bad times there’s a lot of reason for corruption. There were a lot of consuls from various countries, particularly in Central and South America, who took money and didn’t deliver. You probably know from history, you might have heard about the St. Louis, which was a ship which was bound for Cuba where people had visas and the government decided not…that they don’t recognize them because they were not authorized. The ship was waiting for about 10 days or so off the coast of Florida. Nobody volunteered to take something like 600 or 700 refugees. The all returned to Holland and most of them perished during the Holocaust.
In the case of the United States, we applied. We got our number in January. Very little happened and my father was getting impatient and called a friend of his and said, “Look I have a number, I can’t make a living. I want to get out. Things aren’t getting any better. What can I do?” He said, “Well the Consul has an assistant called Fräulein Schmidt. I think it might be useful to get a box of candy.”
So my father has always been a very straightforward kind of guy. He went to Berlin, sent her a nice big box of candy. Another month passed, nothing happened. So he called again and he said, “Oh, didn’t you put a hundred marks into that box of candy?” [He] got another box of candy with a hundred mark bill in the wrapper and in June we were invited to take a physical exam for our visa which we got I think around June 20th.
In order to preserve our funds my father took the next boat and left my mother with me to close up the household and again preserve our capital because he was able to live in a furnished home for 5 dollars a week while he was studying and wasn’t going through his money so that he wouldn’t have to accept any money from the relative who gave us the affidavit and he wanted also keep that open for eventually the rest of the family.
BILL BENSON:
Now with your father in the United States, living obviously very frugally and studying for his medical boards, you and your mother would remain in Germany and I believe your visas were good for 120 days.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
And you would end up leaving right at the end of that 120 day period.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Correct. We left in October.
BILL BENSON:
In October…tell us about that period after your father left when it was just you and your mother, how you were able to…what happened in being able to make it possible for you to then follow your father and leave for the U.S. in October.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Well there were a few things which happened during that time. First of all, my father before he left my father gave notice that he was leaving and he wanted to give…our apartment was a combination apartment and office. The office was where the front, the first three rooms; a waiting room, a treatment room, and a consultation room, which became…which was also our living room.
Now it served both ways. During the day it was consultation. In the evening it was the living room and our apartment. We had a 3 bedroom apartment connected in the back. The way that you protected and office was that you gave the landlord mortgage. In other words you literally paid for him to run the building and that was equivalent of a lease. As long as your landlord had the money he had no reason to fire you, rather to evict you.
He gave notice at that point and we moved into a furnished room across the street at a family we knew so that we could again conserve whatever we needed to conserve.
I am sorry…I just…I just wanted to pass over that. I had an experience during this time again we couldn’t use playgrounds but there was a building which was owned by [a] Jewish family which was also, which had a fairly nice piece of grounds, about 5- 6 blocks away. I took my bicycle. We went there to play. Among other things we played tag. I tripped and broke my arm. So I made my way home. My mother called an orthopedic surgeon in Gleiwitz with whom they were never friends but at various medical affairs they had dinner together and knew him reasonably well on a professional basis. She told him about it and he said, “I am sorry. I don’t treat Jewish children. I can’t help you and you can’t go to the hospital anyway.”
So my mother got on the phone and called somebody in my father’s hometown who said, “Yes. I’ll tell you what to do. Take a cab. It’s about 20 miles and I’ll give you the address of a Catholic orphanage in town. Please go in the back door, the delivery entrance. I’ll meet you there and I’ll take care of your son.” My arm was set. It healed, I am still fine, but it was an experience. At that time I was 9. We grew up before our time.
BILL BENSON:
The amazing thing about that, not only just how antisemitic that was but these physicians had been your father’s colleagues and professional brethren and you had to go through that to get treatment.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, as the time grew closer for your departure, your mother would pack you up, she would be able to make the preparations for you to go and you would end up going to the harbor in Bremerhaven I believe. What happened when you got there, and this is October of 1938?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
I would say in end of September…in September we started getting cables from my father saying please take an earlier boat, get out faster. We had no idea why and we couldn’t get any earlier tickets. We had gotten those tickets at the time to make sure that we get out on time within the time of the visa.
BILL BENSON:
Within that 120 days.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Right. Then finally in October I think it was around the 10th we said goodbye to my grandparents and one of my mother’s brothers came along. We had to stop in Berlin and wait about 3 hours at the police station in order to get our passports stamped with a “J” standing for Jew, which made sure that we didn’t come back and that everybody knew who we were.
Then we went on to Bremen and the ship was supposed to leave on the 12th. When we got there we were told there’s no ship. We had no idea why and we were told the ship was arriving the next day and there we found out that in September you had the famous or infamous Munich Conference between Hitler and Chamberlain from England and Daladier from France, where they basically sold out Czechoslovakia in return for a promise of peace in our time.
In order to threaten, Hitler recalled all ships at sea in order to give the impression that he is ready for war right then and there. If he didn’t get what he wanted. So it took the ship three weeks to make up the three days that they lost in taking it back. But, censorship was total. If you are here and you have a chance to go to the exhibit that the Museum has on State of Deception, if you can think that there is no internet, a totally controlled press and radio and a total prohibition. If you were caught listening to foreign radio stations of which there were a few like in Strasbourg which was a high powered station at the border of France. They would immediately, if anybody was caught they were sent to concentration camps. That was a capital offense.
People were being betrayed by their children. I am talking about the Hitler Youth being organized. The children would be asked, “Well what radio stations to you listen to?” So that the coercion and fret was unbelievable.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, our time is starting to get short and I’d like to be sure that I ask you about a couple of other things before we close up our program. After what was a…once the ship did appear and you made the trip, it was a rough trip for your mother as I recall, particularly, and others on board the ship. You made it to the United States, you reunited with your father in late October, 1938. A short while after that your parents actually went out together one evening leaving you at home. Tell us about that night that they were at the movies.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
The first time they went out was on November 9. They had a neighbor…we lived in an apartment house. We had a neighbor looking in on me about every 15 minutes or so like a babysitter, but I wouldn’t have one at that point. All of a sudden at about 9 o’clock the phone rang. The person called from my grandparents. I think the next hour and a half was the longest hour and a half of my life. I couldn’t answer it because this was a call…it was 3 o’clock in the morning in Germany at that time. This was a call from my grandparents that my mother’s brother’s had been jailed and that this was the famous Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” when the Holocaust started for real.
In other words, at that point, people were arrested. Their business had been confiscated. They basically they were worried for their lives and even though my grandparents at first my grandfather was mad at my father for taking away his only daughter maybe never to see her again. But, they realized that they wouldn’t be able to weather it which they really expected up to that time.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, your father would pass his boards on his first try very quickly, but he also then began trying to help figure out how to bring other family members out of Germany as well. Will you tell us a little bit about his experience in doing that?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
As I mentioned, with our spending allowance on the ship, we were able to get through that period without asking for any money. He took the next bus to New York to go to the relative whom I described before. When it got to my grandparents and my mother’s brothers he said he doesn’t think he can take the responsibility figuring we didn’t ask any questions but the rest of the family probably would and he didn’t want to face that. We were never able to do it because he started his practice on Valentine’s day in 1939 and at that point he certainly couldn’t guarantee that the family wouldn’t be on welfare if he got over another 5 people.
BILL BENSON:
So that door was closed?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
That door was closed.
BILL BENSON:
Your father would successfully, I believe, get a visa for your grandfather.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
This was about a year later and he was on the way to get out. War had started already. He was supposed to get out through Spain and got sick on the way to Berlin and was taken straight to Theresienstadt where he died in 1940.
BILL BENSON:
And tell us, if you don’t mind, about your mother’s brothers and their effort to get away.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
They were, they managed to get a ticket for Shanghai. By the way, there were two places which gave relatively good refuge during this critical time. Most, virtually all of the countries closed their doors. But the Dominican Republic under a nasty dictator by the name of Trujillo still accepted a lot of refugees and so did the Chinese even under Japanese occupation.
They got a ticket on an Italian ship and left the beginning of June on the day before the Italian’s declared war on England and France during the rapid Blitzkrieg when the Nazis over ran Paris. The Italian ship obviously couldn’t get through the Suez Canal. It returned to Genoa and that’s the last we heard of them.
BILL BENSON:
So no idea for sure what happened to them after that?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
We have no idea what happened. We assume the worst. We may get some closure from the Archives which are being worked on now which were discovered in Germany a couple of years ago.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, did any of your other family members survive the Holocaust?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
My father’s brother who was in Austria left Austria quickly with the Nazi annexation. It was on a ship to South Africa where his wife had relatives. During the sailing the British closed the South African quota so that he couldn’t get into it and they took refuge in Southern Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe, in Central Africa where he served about 5 years in the British Army as a Quartermaster of a prisoner of war camp. At the end of the War he couldn’t get British citizenship.
BILL BENSON:
They denied his citizenship?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
They denied his citizenship and my father did get him to the United States but he was in severely failing health at that time, having suffered a heart attack which was miss- diagnosed. Basically, he died in the middle ‘50s.
BILL BENSON:
Frank, I think we are at the end of our time. We are not going to have time for questions of Frank, but Frank you are going to make yourself available for awhile afterwards is that’s okay?
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Okay. Okay.
BILL BENSON:
So when we close up in just couple of moments Frank will step down off the stage so please if you have a question feel free absolutely to come up and ask him or just to say hi and meet him personally if you want to do that. I wish that we had more time, there is obviously we are just scratching the surface. We haven’t begun and obviously we can’t talk about Frank and his family’s life once they moved to the United States and began their new lives here. I think ultimately Frank told me that for his parents, and for himself, they made a terrific adjustment to the United States and had very long and successful lives here and Frank particularly with a long career that we described in the beginning. I wish we could tell you about his return to Gleiwitz with his family a few years ago and many other things.
At any rate I’d like to thank all of you for being here, to remind you that we will have a First Person program each Tuesday through the end of July and each Wednesday until the end of August so our next First Person program will be tomorrow Wednesday, July 15 when our first person will be Mr. George Pick who is from Hungary. After German troops occupied Hungary in March of 1944 the Pick family, along with other Jews in the capital had to move into special buildings marked with the yellow star. Later that year the Pick’s went into hiding by would soon be discovered. George was then placed in a home with 500 other children but he soon escaped from there. Those who stayed behind were killed. In January, 1945 the Picks were liberated from the city’s ghetto by Soviet troops.
I’d like to remind you that we have our excerpts of our First Person programs in the form of podcasts on the Museum’s website as well as through iTunes. It’s our tradition at First Person that our first person has the last word so with that I’d like to turn back to Frank for any thoughts he’d like to share to close our program today.
FRANK LIEBERMANN:
Hello, again. I always end any conversation that I have with the following, first of all I have my wife here, two daughters, and a son who lives in Seattle. We also have 5 grandchildren. I am very proud of the fact that we’ve really been able to live the American dream which I would not have dreamed of when I was in the pictures which you saw here. I always end the best revenge is living well. I wish the same for you.
[Applause]
