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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. We are in our tenth year of the First Person program. Our First Person today is Mr. Freddie Traum, who shall meet shortly.
This 2009 season of First Person is made possible though the generosity of the Louis and Doris Smith Foundation, to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person.
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 with the Museum.
With few exceptions we will have a First Person program each Wednesday through August 26. We are also having First Person programs on Tuesdays through the end of July. The Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org provides a list of the 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. Several have already been posted as podcasts. Freddie Traum’s will be posted within the next several weeks. The First Person podcasts join two other Museum podcast series: Voices on Antismitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcast series, all three of them, are also available though iTunes.
Freddie Traum will share with us his first hand account of his experience during the Holocaust, and as a survivor, for about forty minutes. If time allows, we will follow that with an opportunity for you to ask a few questions of Freddie. Before you are introduced to him, I have several requests of you and several announcements.
First, if it’s at all possible, please stay seated with us throughout our one-hour program; that way we minimize any disruptions while Freddie speaks. Second, if we do have time for a question and answer period 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 can hear it, including Freddie, and then he’ll 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 are holding passes to the Permanent Exhibition today, please know they are good for the entire afternoon, so you can comfortably stay with us through our one hour program and then see 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 tyranny.
More than 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, anti-Semitism, and genocide still threaten our world. 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 Freddie Traum is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with Freddie’s introduction. And we begin with this photo of Alfred, or Freddie, Traum.
Freddie was born in March of 1929 in Vienna, Austria. The arrow on this map of Europe points to Austria. And on this map of Austria, our arrow points to Vienna. Freddie had one sister. His mother and father owned a business. The Traum family lived in a secular neighborhood, and most of Freddie’s playmates were non-Jewish boys. Pictured here are Freddie Traum, on the bicycle, and his cousin Joseph, taken in 1938.
On March 12, 1938, German troops invaded Austria. The following day, Austria was incorporated into Germany in what was known as the Anschluss. After Freddie’s parents learned about the Kindertransport—a rescue effort, which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain between 1938 and 1940—they decided to send their two children to England. In 1939, Freddie and his sister Ruth went to live with a family in London. This photo was taken on the afternoon of Freddie and Ruth’s departure for London. Pictured from left to right, we see his sister Ruth, Freddie’s grandmother, his father, Freddie, and his mother. And in this next photo, we see Freddie’s passport that he used on his journey on the Kindertransport to England.
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began. When England declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the Traum children and thousands of others were sent to live in the English countryside. Freddie spent the next three years of his life living in the British countryside. Here we see twelve year old Freddie, and his sister Ruth, at an evacuation residence near Luten, England.
After the war, Freddie found out that his parents had perished. He remained in England and later joined the British Army, and also spent time in the Israeli Army. Freddie would become a merchant seaman and eventually move to Israel where he met his wife Josiane on his ship. We close with this photo from Freddie and Josiane’s wedding aboard the Israeli passenger liner, SS Zion, taken in 1958.
Today Freddie and Josiane live in Silver Spring, Maryland. Freddie recently retired from Boeing, and Josiane retired last year from her work as a clinical social worker working with abused children for Child Protective Services in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Josiane and her mother are both Holocaust survivors. Josiane’s mother, Fanny Aizenberg, arranged for three year old Josiane to be hidden in 1942, before Fanny would be deported to Auschwitz. Fanny survived, and reunited with her daughter Josiane after the war.
Freddie is active in the local Kindertransport Association, which is made up of fellow survivors of the Kindertransport, and he chairs the local Kindertransport Association. Freddie volunteers here at the Museum on Tuesdays as a researcher with the International Tracing Service archives. He also serves as a tour guide for the Museum’s special exhibitions, including last year’s exhibit about the 1936 Nazi Olympics, and he will be trained as a tour guide for the special exhibition on Nazi propaganda, which is next door in the room—as you exit you’ll see it to your right. Freddie also speaks publicly about his experience as a survivor, including speaking very recently at the Stennis Space Center, in Mississippi.
And with that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our First Person, Mr. Freddie Traum.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie, thank you so much for joining us and for your willingness to be our First Person today. We have so much to discuss and to cover so I’d like to begin as quickly as we can.
Freddie, you told me on an earlier visit you and I had, that you would describe your early childhood as a happy childhood. Let’s begin with you telling us about those early childhood years, those happier years, about your family, about your community, about yourself.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
I believe I had a very happy childhood. We were not wealthy by any means but I had everything that I thought a child should have. We went away on vacations, [I] had lots of friends around where I lived, and most of them were not Jewish. But it was a wonderful childhood; I couldn’t really imagine having anything more than that.
We had a close family relationship. We had uncles and aunts and cousins, and I think I was a spoiled little brat, if anything. Had not many material things, but then the kind of love and care I got at home.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie, tell us a little bit about your father. He was a disabled veteran of the First World War.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yes, that right. He had difficulty getting around. He could only do that with the aid of two canes. As a consequence he rarely left the house—only on special occasions. But he was always home when I came home from school and he was very gifted with his hands, as far as drawing, making anything, all kinds of things, repairing things. He was very able when he was seated; he could just about do anything. And my mother took care of the business from the outside, and he did whatever had to be done, like you might say in an office, he did it at home.
BILL BENSON:
In fact you told me, Freddie, that you actually spent more time with your father than your mother—unusual for most kids, particularly in that era.
FREDDIE TRAUM: That’s right, much more. He was always home when I came home and of course he had pictures of when he was in the service in the First World War. I used to love to go through that and have him tell me the same story. I guess I could listen to them all the time. And yeah, he spent a lot of time with me.
BILL BENSON:
Your parents had an amazing business, a most interesting business—again, probably for the time, too. Tell us about it.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well it really wasn’t that amazing. This is a period before people had credit cards and before you could buy things on time. So the type of business we had was when we had catalogues, people would come and choose some kind of merchandise, whether it was a radio, a bicycle, or a tablecloth. And we would purchase it, they would come and pick it up, and then they would pay off on it. And I guess the difference between what we bought the merchandise for and what they paid us, that was the profit that we lived on.
BILL BENSON:
And people purchased it on time installments.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yes, installments.
BILL BENSON:
And yet you wouldn’t have a large inventory at home?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
No, no, we would only had what people had actually ordered. We didn’t have any sort of stock.
BILL BENSON:
Your sister, she was what, three years older than you?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yes, exactly.
BILL BENSON:
And what was your formal citizenship?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well, my parents were born in Poland. And they were born at a time when that part of Poland belonged to Austria. And I think the area was called Galicia, and that’s how come most of us spoke Germany and they had German names and so on. And after the First World War those places were broken up, and whether they had Polish citizenship or not, I don’t know. But that passport you showed beforehand, the top line where it said “nationality,” it said “stateless.”
BILL BENSON:
Stateless.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
And as a matter of fact, all the Jews who left Poland, you know, around after the First World War, when it was free for them to go to Austria, in order to help the Germans do what they want with the Jews, the Polish government came out with a law, that if anybody had been away from Poland for more than five years, that they automatically lose their citizenship. Of course we fell into that category. So we had no citizenship and no passport. And that’s what made it almost impossible for anybody to get out without having a travel document.
BILL BENSON:
And virtually no rights in the eyes of the Austrian government
FREDDIE TRAUM:
That’s right.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie you told me that as Hitler’s influence grew, your friends started to belong to Nazi youth organizations. Tell us what you remember about that time, about what you think your parents might have been experiencing in the time leading up to the Anschluss and the German annexation of Austria, and then later that year, of course, Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well obviously my parents were much more aware of the type of philosophy that Hitler and the Nazis were preaching, because the radio was full of it. And in fact one of our neighbors asked if he could listen to Hitler’s speech on our radio and he came in, and I saw the expression on my parents’ faces as he was ranting and raving. And I heard the word “Jew” frequently within this conversation but I couldn’t really focus on it, and listen to it. I was more engrossed with this man’s gas mask case. He was in some Nazi—
BILL BENSON:
The fellow who was in your house?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah. He was actually a nice man; he lived at the end of the corridor where we lived. And he was in some group, NSKK, used to wear an armband. It was only here that I found out that that was some kind of a transport group. So, you know, in order to satisfy me, he opened the gas mask case and let me play with it while they listened to this speech. But it must have been a pretty hateful speech.
BILL BENSON:
Tells us a little bit about what the Anschluss was.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well it was the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich, as they call it. The Austrians were very willing members of that; you know, he got a tremendous welcome, and the kids very quickly were incorporated into various youth groups: the Hitler Youth for the older ones, Deutsche Jugend, or German Youth, for the younger ones. And all my friends, my playmates, were enlisted into that. So at first they used to just come and show me what they had: the uniforms, they got some little dagger that they hung from their belts. And they were very proud of it and showed it to me very proudly and all that. And they seemed to be having a great time.
But then gradually as that indoctrination took place—well first of all they were very busy—but then afterwards when I saw them, they didn’t want to have anything much to do with me. And gradually that turned into open hostility and name-calling and coming home from school—you know, I was pushed around and all that kind of thing a lot.
BILL BENSON:
And these had included your friends? People you played with?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
And over time, as you put it to me before, it just became more ominous. And you’d said that, or you must have even felt a form of betrayal by your friends?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
I don’t know how I articulated it, but one thing happened at the same time—well, let’s see, Kristallnacht was when they burned our synagogue down, and I used to sing in the choir there. I was only eight years old, but I must have had a fairly decent voice at that age.
But as we were ostracized by the Austrian community, the Jewish community became much more cohesive. There were youth movements, Zionist youth movements. My sister being older, she joined one of those. And I used to kind of tag along. And they used to sing songs and learn dances and have lectures and all that, and it was a lot of fun.
And then, I forgot who it was, but somebody found out that I’d been in a choir, and they were starting a Jewish youth choir. Now, it was named in the same way as the Vienna Boys Choir but it was a Judische Singerknaben, meaning a Jewish boys choir. And so we were going to be measured for sailor suits, and in fact we cut a couple of records, I don’t know if they were around some place.
So I was busy, with that. I was twice a week going to choir practice, and this was cross town because I mentioned, I lived in a non-Jewish area, and all these other things were taking place in the center of the city in the Jewish area. So I had to go with the underground and all that.
One thing [that] was true which I don’t think is true today, I don’t think you would send an eight year old kid across town by themselves anywhere, but then, that seemed to be quite normal. So I was very busy as a little kid, then, and felt I was having a good time. Kids adjust to things very quickly. They don’t sit around and worry about the friend they used to have that is no longer a friend now. We just pick up new friends and go on from there. And that’s the way it was.
And now one thing that happened was, a lot of older young people I knew, including four of my cousins, went to Palestine. So I was used to hearing about different people that were going to Palestine, and since four of my cousins went, we got letters back from them, and they seemed to be having a good time there. And so you almost get to the point of, when's it going to be my time? And so this being sent away on the Kindertransport didn't happen in a vacuum that somebody one day said, "Hey, you're going." There were things leading up to it.
And of course the only thing is we never thought that this would be forever and that we'd never see our parents again. But we knew to whom we were going.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie after the Anschluss and Kristallnacht, were you able, in the remaining time you had in Austria before you went, were you able to continue in school? And then let me also ask you at the same time, what happened to your father's business, if you don't mind talking about those two things?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, well, I'll mention my father's business first. At first people still honored their debts in a normal way. My mother used to go out collecting and sometimes my mother would send us, my sister and I, to certain places and to collect. And people were nice. They knew they had a debt to pay and they paid it.
But then after a while, with the Nazi propaganda as it was, they felt, “Well you don't buy from Jews, you're not allowed to buy from them. Then why should they pay?”
BILL BENSON:
Even though they'd already made the obligation?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, they already had the goods. So they just stopped paying, and so it meant that there was absolutely no income. How my parents managed, I don't know. But of course I wasn't there long enough to find out. But the fact is, that's what happens.
As far as school is concerned, there was one part in, I guess it was in '39, when I was ousted from my school, expelled from my school. I was the only Jewish kid in my class, and I don't think there were any others in other classes. I guess the idea was that they didn't want me to contaminate their kids.
Anyway, in some respects, that was a blessing, because it became pretty horrid in the school, leaving school, getting all the tormenting from the other kids. So we went to a school which was much further away from home, but that was a school for Jews. So I was sitting amongst friends there, and I was there until the day I left.
BILL BENSON:
Let's talk now about the day you left. Freddie, it wouldn't be long after Kristallnacht and November of 1938 that your parents made this, for them—as you said earlier, you might have expected that you would be leaving for at least some temporary period but for your parents, they made this profound decision to send you and your sister away to England on the Kindertransport. Tell us what you can—I'm sure there's a lot you don't know, but what went into their decision making, and how they arranged for you to be on the Kindertransport.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well, where they got to hear about it, I don't know. But I don't suppose it could have been a closely guarded secret, because the first Kindertransport was on the second of December 1938, and I left in the end of June 1939, so quite a few months in between. The kids came to England in two fashions: they were either guaranteed, which meant a placement had already been found for them, a family that would take them in, or somebody to take them in, or they were unguaranteed, which meant they would arrive in England and then they would probably be housed in a hostel or some places around the country until they had a foster parent or somebody would take them in.
So the family that took us in had two children of their own, close to ages that we were; the girl was older to the boy by three years, just as I was with my sister. They were working class people. He was a locomotive driver. But of course in England at that time, if you worked for the London Northeastern Railway, you had a job for life, and he was at the top of his particular profession in that. And they owned their own home, and they had the room, and of course most importantly, they had the will and the heart to do something like that.
BILL BENSON:
Before you continue on, if you don't mind Freddie, telling us about England and the Griggs and what happened there, tell us a little more about actually getting from Austria to England, what you know about how you got there. Because you went by train?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
And there were some things that happened as part of that trip.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
My mother took us to the train, and you know, it was a special train just for this children's transport. We were talking and all of a sudden my schoolmaster appeared in front of me, carrying his son, a five year old. And apparently—well he knew I was going on the Kindertransport, and obviously made arrangements for his son to go too, although he was only five. So he handed him through the window to me and asked if he could sit with us.
BILL BENSON:
And you're ten years old? And he hands his five year old son to you?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
That must have been a hard decision for him. So all of a sudden, I felt myself kind of growing up to be in charge of this little one, and he sat with us until we got to London, because we went by train from Vienna to the hook of Holland, and then we were placed on a ship that took us across to Harwich and then by train again to Liverpool Street.
BILL BENSON:
You had said to me, Freddie, that there were adult chaperones on the trains, and you thought they must have been very brave people.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yes, there were people who accompanied the Kindertransport. And they had to return back to Vienna, and I guess when I say "had to return," somebody within their family was probably like a hostage to make sure that they returned. So these people were pretty brave to make this trip, to keep going backwards and forward, and seeing the freedom and yet at the same time having to return, and whatever fate they had in the end, I have no way of knowing. But I think they were brave.
BILL BENSON:
Do you know much about the—your father had arranged somehow with a business associate to get you to a family in England.
FREDDIE TRAUM: That's right. There was a family called Stari. I met them in Vienna a number of times, and he was a business associate and I think he helped to arrange for us to go there. Whether this was in lieu of some payment he owed or just as a good deed I have no way of knowing. But they met us at Liverpool Street Station in London and took us to the Griggs' home. And I didn't see them again after that.
BILL BENSON:
One more question, and I know it's a real tough one Freddie, and that is, we saw in the slide presentation a photograph taken with your family on the day you left Vienna. Would you mind saying a little bit about that, if you don’t mind?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well my father was a bit of an amateur photographer, he used to do his own prints and all that, so he set the camera up on a tripod and then sat down and put it on timed exposure. But there was nobody there standing in front saying “Okay hold your heads up” or “Smile” or anything like that. So you have a very kind of sad and miserable picture. But it’s the only picture I have.
BILL BENSON:
So you get to England, you arrive in Liverpool Street Station in London, you’re in a new country, you don’t speak the language, what happened?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well, we were taken to the Griggs’ home, which was very different to our home—I mean, he was old fashioned style, authoritarian family, you know, at meal times you don’t speak. And of course not only didn’t they speak during the mealtime but certainly [it] wouldn’t be heard of to speak a foreign language that nobody else could understand. Yet the only language I knew at that time was German, and so since my sister was in a different room and I didn’t speak with her, I literally couldn’t speak with anyone for quite a while.
But the following Monday they signed me up in school. And they put me into an age-appropriate class and—I mean, the only English I knew was “yes” and “no,” and for some reason I learned “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.”
BILL BENSON:
“Yes,” “no,” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, and that was the extent of my English language. And during playtime, one of the kids came over to me [and] said, “Do you want to fight?” So I used my one word that I knew and said, “Yes.” And next thing I knew, he punched me! And I had no idea where that was coming from. But it took a while.
Well, actually I should say, it didn’t take that long. English came very quickly, and by the time war broke out—actually the day that Germany marched into Poland, September 1, 1939—most of the schools in London evacuated their children to safety in the surrounding countryside places. It’s amazing the organization they had. I mean, just as much as they were unprepared to fight a war, they were wonderfully prepared to evacuate the children.
So we went by train to this little place, and three days later, the war broke out, I mean England declared war on Germany based on the agreement they had with Poland. So I was there for three years; my sister was there for about a year and a half and then went back to London. Meanwhile my foster mother in London, Mrs. Griggs, had died at the beginning of the war. So when my sister went back to London, she actually did all the things that the eldest daughter would do, she had to take care of the house and food and all that.
BILL BENSON:
Before we continue on with that, let’s go back to when you were evacuated to the countryside. So what that meant is having to leave the Griggs family, and be placed with another family. And that was quite a contrast to your experience with the Griggs.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, we were unwelcome guests, to put it mildly. The thing is, the organization they had for evacuees was that some representative from the Women’s Voluntary Service would meet say, a class, and they would go up the street in this development, and she had a list of everybody’s home—how many people lived there, and how many bedrooms they had.
And this was a young couple, in their late twenties, and they had three bedrooms. So they had a choice of either taking in a family that was being evacuated from London, or a couple of soldiers to be billeted there, or a couple of evacuees. And they choose the latter of these three evils.
BILL BENSON:
So it wasn’t voluntary that they had to take somebody.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
No, no.
BILL BENSON:
They had to have somebody?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah. Now I don’t know to whom they would appeal if they said no, but that’s the way it was.
BILL BENSON:
But they weren’t opening up their hearts and doors.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Oh no, no. As a matter of fact, I was not allowed inside that house except when it came time to eat or to sleep. And the rest of the time I had to be out, and of course if any of you are familiar with English weather, it can be pretty miserable. So I used to shelter in doorways out of the rain, and then ask people the time, because if I came late I’d be in trouble.
But as I said, kids become used to anything, and when I was a bit older, I used to volunteer on the farm. They were wonderful, the farmers, and they used to invite me to Christmas dinner, and I’d go there and I’d work and I’d earn a little bit of pocket money. So that was pretty good. But the home environment there was not nice.
BILL BENSON:
Am I correct that you actually heard the Misses in the house say that she hates Jews?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, she once said to me once that she thought that what Hitler was doing to them was the right thing.
BILL BENSON:
And this is the house that you’re forced to live in.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah. Well, the thing is if I would have opened my mouth, and said to my headmaster in school, “I’m not happy there,” they would have had me out of there immediately. I just didn’t think I had the right to complain. And so I didn’t.
But one aspect is that I was no longer looked upon as a refugee, you know a lone kind of refugee. Being evacuated with all the kids, it leveled the playing field. We were all evacuees, all London urchins suddenly placed in this place in the country.
BILL BENSON:
My mother and her six brothers were Londoners and they were evacuated to the country side—
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Oh yeah?
BILL BENSON: Oh yeah, and she tells some pretty astonishing stories about that time. I wanted to ask you, during that whole period, going out to live with the Clissold family and the Griggs in London, did your parents know anything about where you were? Did you know anything about your parents?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
In the beginning, I think the last letter we got was dated 1941. And my parents used, at that time—you know war was already engaged between England and Germany—but we had some relatives in Switzerland, so they would write a letter to Switzerland and they would forward it to us. And so we did have communication in this way.
BILL BENSON:
And Switzerland was a neutral country, so they could send mail to England, okay.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yes. Also we had a cousin in Tangiers, Morocco, and they communicated that way, too. But in the beginning of 1942, we had a Red Cross card, just twenty five words, and that was like a goodbye card. I know now, they were deported in ’42. But I don’t know exactly when that card was sent.
BILL BENSON:
But just in a few words it let you know that…
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
Do you still have that?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
I may have it. When my sister died, she had all these letters. So I have them in my possession now. Whether that card is there or not, I don’t know, it might be.
BILL BENSON:
When you returned to London, you started to tell us about that earlier, that Ruth went back—because Mrs. Griggs had died—your sister performed what the oldest daughter in that day would have done to take care of Mr. Griggs. And what happened to you?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well I came back to London, and I left school at fourteen. At that time in England unless you were enrolled in a grammar school or some special educational facility where you had to take exams and when you were ten or eleven, then you left school at fourteen. So I left at fourteen and I went back, and I had to find myself a job.
BILL BENSON: And the war’s still going on, very much.
FREDDIE TRAUM: Oh yeah, yeah. That was at the time when the doodlebugs, the buzz bombs, had just started. So I could lay in bed at nighttime and watch them go across the sky, little blue flames. It was like a jet engine attached to a bomb. And when the light went out that’s when it used to come down and you could hear the explosion. And you just hoped it wouldn’t come down on you.
BILL BENSON:
So here you are, just fourteen years old, and you have to go to work.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us, you must share with us this, I think, wonderful story about getting into the printing business, if you wouldn’t mind.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
This story [shows] how stupid I am, I guess, but my guardian and his brother, they were both real staunch union type of persons—
BILL BENSON:
This is Mr. Griggs?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, and I came into the kitchen and they were discussing me, what kind of job I should go looking for. And they said, “Well it has to be a place with a good union.” And Uncle Bert—everybody in England, when you go there becomes either an uncle or an aunt, you know, it’s a normal thing—so they said he should go into printing newspaper, because no matter what the conditions or the situation, people always read newspapers.
So I thought that sounded like a good idea. So the next day I went to Fleet Street. If any of you know London, Fleet Street’s the news capital of the world, all the major newspapers are in that street. I’d no idea what services I could provide, as a fourteen year old without any skills or background, but I went down there looking and I was standing outside the Daily Telegraph.
And a boy came and stood next to me. There were display windows with old pictures that appeared in the newspapers, and he was a messenger boy. He had one of those pillbox hats, I could just read “Telegraph” on the side.
So I said, “What’s it like working for the Telegraph?” He said, “Oh it’s a great company. Are you looking for a job?” So I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well the head office isn’t here, come with me I’m going there now.”
So I fell into step with him and we went over there and I saw a big, brass plaque outside the building; I could just read “Telegraph” there. I went inside, and he told me to wait in the waiting room there. On the coffee table were a few newspapers, “Daily Telegraph,” and presently somebody came out and said, “I understand you’re looking for a job. Do you want to come in?” And he called me into his office.
And he says, “What kind of work do you want to do?” And I said, “Printing.” So he looked at me and said, “How do you know we do printing?” And I thought this must be the most stupid question anybody ever asked, but I thought maybe there was a trick somewhere. So I said, “Well everybody knows you do printing.” And so he said, “All right.”
Then he said, “Well we don’t do it here, we do it in Tring, in Hertfordshire.” So I thought, I reasoned, that, well, that’s probably how come [it] doesn’t matter how bad the air raid is the previous night, the paper’s always there first thing in the morning. That’s how they do it.
So then he told me that—I don’t remember any details about salaries or conditions or nothing like that—they agreed to hire me, and he gave me a ticket, told me go to Euston Station, Monday morning at eight o’clock, that we’d take the train to Tring. He said there’ll be a bunch of people getting on and there’ll be a whole group, a lot of people getting off, and there’ll be a bus waiting to take them to a little village called Hastoe.
So I agreed. I came home and said, “I got a job with the Daily Telegraph, and I’m going to be living in Tring during the week and come back weekends.” My sister wasn’t too happy about the idea, but I don’t [think] even Uncle Charlie knew about it; he was probably on the train going out to Edinburgh.
Anyway so, Monday came there and I got on the train. Any guy I saw with a raincoat on I thought had to be a journalist or a correspondent or something. I arrived in Tring; a bus came there and took us up to a village of Hastoe, and a woman in charge there knew that I was coming, so she told me that I would be billeted with some place in the village there as far as sleeping. For meals, we took over the village hall, and there they had a cook and provided all the meals for us. And there was a big barn, I guess, a large facility, and she told me to go across there and introduce myself a Mr. Carter, who was the manager there.
So I went over there and I saw all these printing machines, small ones, that printed 8x10 or 16x10. They’re multilith—they’re actually American, a multigraph that used to make those lithographic printing machines. And so I saw them, they were chugging away for all they were worth, and they were making photography and making plates and all that.
And then I turned to Mr. Carter and said, “Where do they print the newspapers?” And he said, “What newspapers?” I said, “The Daily Telegraph.” He said, “Well, this isn’t the Daily Telegraph. This is the Exchange Telegraph.”
And it was different company. They actually print financial statements. They get the news on the tickertape and teleprinters and then they have a photography department and they finish up with printing these documents, which were then sent to London for distribution, mailers to their people.
BILL BENSON:
So thus began your printing career, not your newspaper career.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, but actually it was a wonderful job, I was there for two years, and because I was so young, they put me through every department to learn the maximum I could, because they knew in another few years, the war continues, and I’ll be called up.
And all the guys were either young, or there was one older guy who could not be called up, he had some problem. But otherwise, you know, that’s what happens. You had either women in the typing pool or the guys working on the machines. And one by one as they turned eighteen they were called up. And so—
BILL BENSON:
Meaning they were drafted to then join the army.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
So they had to have a reservoir of people who were trained in all the things so they could be replaced.
BILL BENSON:
So they needed fourteen year olds?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well, yeah. Also it was a wonderful learning experience because instead of being just stuck in one thing, they made sure that you had training in every one of the departments.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie, to move forward a little bit, [when] the war ended you were sixteen years of age. Once the war was over, what happened to you? What did you and your sister do?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well, we still lived in London with the Griggs family; there were four kids and Mr. Griggs. And in 1946, he retired. And it was the strangest thing, because in all the war years he was in the footplate of one of these big locomotives, being shaken up all day and he was fine, he went through the war. And as soon as he retired, he became sick, and it was just a downhill thing. A couple of months later, he died.
And so then there were the four kids, and we had to split up. His two kids went with his family, and my sister and I—well we actually, through some contact my sister had made, moved to Manchester. And all during the war years and until middle of ’46, I’d never actually come across any Jewish people, let alone Kindertransport. We just didn’t have any contact in this manner.
And so when we went to Manchester, it was the first time we came into a Jewish community. And I think a lot of this was due to my sister felt that we should take up our roots again, and we did. And I joined some youth movements and found a place where I was very happy.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us, I know our time’s running short, Freddie, but let’s talk a little it about when you finally turned eighteen which I think [was] 1947, now you’re subject to the draft.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, in ’47 [the] British government realized that they had taken in about 10,000 kids and most of them didn’t have any family or anywhere to go back to, and most of them didn’t have any nationality, either.
So they offered us all citizenship without having to make any formal application or anything like that. You just go somewhere in an office and sign. And that made you a citizen and you could get a passport and have all the benefits, plus obligations. In my case, as a boy, it meant when I become eighteen, I would get called up.
BILL BENSON:
And you did.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
And tell us what happened.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
When I got called up, [I] went to have my medical and tests, that’s the way it usually goes, and if you pass all that, then they send you home and say you’ll be notified in due course as far as where you report and so on. And I was very happy about that, but it happened to coincide with the same time when Israel was made a state and the war started in Palestine. And I couldn’t see myself joining the British Army when I should really be in the Israeli Army.
So, I volunteered for the Israeli Army, and pretty soon, you know, I was accepted. And so a couple of months later, so I was already in Israel in the army there, meanwhile, my calling up papers came for me to report in England. And of course I wasn’t there, so the police came looking for me. And this happened three times and eventually my sister, with whom I had lived, told them that I was in Israel, in the army. So they stopped calling at her.
So anyways, they know I served in the Tzahal–
BILL BENSON:
But you’re technically, in their eyes, considered AWOL?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, I was AWOL. Technically.
BILL BENSON:
Technically, yes.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
And so when I was discharged from the Israeli Army I decided two things: number one I had to go back to England to do my service, and two I wanted to live in Israel but I wasn’t sure what to do. So I met somebody who was in the Merchant Navy and I decided that that would be a good thing.
So I went to the shipping office and I asked them, “If I go to England, if I go to the Merchant Marine Academy and graduate, will you give me a job?” And they said, “Yes, we’ll welcome you with open arms.”
So my mind was made up. I went back to England and as soon as I arrived in port, I didn’t realize they were that well organized, but the guy had a piece of paper and he said, “You know you’re wanted by the Army?” So I said, “Yes, that’s why I’m here.” He said, “All right, make sure you report to the place when you get home.”
And they were very civil about it, because I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know anybody else in the same situation. And I did just that. Couple of weeks later I got my orders to report to Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. So when I got there, al the new inductees had their paybook all aligned on the table in alphabetic order, and where mine should have been there was just a note saying, “See Adjutant.”
And the Adjutant is in charge of the discipline. So the sergeant even said, “Oh so you decided to come back, have you?” It’s like they knew everything about me. I was really astonished. So the next morning he marched me into the Adjutant’s office, and instead of getting a harsh dressing down, he was very civil, very nice. He told the Sergeant to wait outside and asked me to sit down and then he started asking me how things were in Israel, was the Haifa Refinery still operating, all kinds of mundane questions.
It took a while before I realized that this regiment that I had come to, the 1721st Lancers, was one of the last regiments to leave Palestine, and when they came back to the UK, they became a training regiment. And so they knew quite a lot about the place I’d come from, and had took a personal interest in me having been there.
And so the guy said, “Look, if I thought you were trying to evade service, I’d throw the book at you; you’d spend two years in Colchester.” That’s Leavenworth, English Leavenworth. But he said, “Now we’ll just wipe the slate clean and you just do your two years service in the normal manner.” And everything went fine.
BILL BENSON:
So you served your two years and would then become a merchant seaman, and eventually end up sailing under the Israeli flag?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah, well I served two years, most of the time in Germany as a tank commander. And then I went into the Merchant Marine Academy. When I graduated from there I sent a letter to the Israeli Merchant Navy, Merchant Fleet.
Took them ages before they even replied, and what I didn’t realize is that five years in Israel is like fifty years anywhere else. By this time they had their own Merchant Marine Academy, they were graduating their own people. They weren’t waiting for me. And I needed to get a job, I owed money from my education and so on, so I went on British ships because they were going around recruiting.
And so I was on an English ship for, you know, year and a half, two years. Which turned out to be good, because I had a wonderful experience. I traveled all over the world, and I saved a lot of money, so when I came back home, I went back to referred education, which was to get a chief’s ticket and a newly formed radar course.
So I took that and the next time I applied to Israel, this time they said, “Come on down to London and we’ll interview you.” And they offered me a job to join a ship in Hamburg which was a new passenger ship which was just being readied, wasn’t quite finished yet. So I stayed there.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie, we’re really at 2:00 and we’re not going to have time to have some questions from you directly up here, but Freddie will stay behind, when we finish, step down off the stage in a couple of minutes. If any of you would like to just meet him or ask him another question, please absolutely feel free to do that. He’s prepared for you to do that.
I do want to ask you, Freddie, before we begin our closing up, and we’re going to turn back to Freddie for a closing statement shortly, when did you find out what happened to your parents?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Well I knew that they did not survive. We knew that when we were still in England in ‘47 or so. As far as more detail, it’s something I learned here .The record I saw here, when they were deported to Minsk in ’42, and I also know that they people who were sent in this manner to Minsk, they were the ones that were taken by truck to some place where there was a ditch and they were just mowed down. So I know that that was their end.
BILL BENSON:
And that’s relatively recent that you learned that.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
And how about your sister? What happened to your sister?
FREDDIE TRAUM:
She and her husband and her two children went to Israel in 1956. They lived on what they call a moshav, it’s like a kibbutz but they all live in separate houses. It’s a beautiful spot on the Mediterranean, and it’s a farming community. And my nephew, the younger nephew, was an officer in the tank war, and he was actually killed in the ‘73 War. His brother, his older brother, still lives in that place. He’s married with two children. And my sister’s husband died quite a number of years ago, and she died in 2000.
BILL BENSON:
Freddie I want to thank you for being willing to be our First Person and I will turn back to Freddie in just a moment. I want to thank all of you for being here. We obviously could only just cover a few things about what Freddie went through, what he experienced.
I wish you could hear him talk more—I know that this would probably be very painful for Freddie—but to talk about his parents and his father, but when I first met Freddie at his house, he showed me a room that he built. And he’s a very talented man but he wasn’t a builder, he wasn’t an electrician, but if you don’t mind me paraphrasing, he said, “I knew I could do this, because my dad could do anything. With his severe disabilities he could do anything, and he gave me the confidence to know that whatever I needed to do, I could do, because my dad could do it.” And I was very touched by that.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
You said it better than I could have.
BILL BENSON:
Anyway, I want you all to know that we will have First Person programs each Wednesday until the end of August. We have programs on Tuesdays until the end of July. Our next program is next Tuesday, which is May 26 when our First Person will be Mr. Gerald Liebenau, who’s from Berlin, Germany.
Five years after the Nazis took control of Germany, Mr. Liebenau’s family fled to England and then made their way to the United States. After graduating from high school in the United States, Mr. Liebenau joined the US Army and would be sent to Europe during the last years of World War II. So please come back to the First Person program either this year or next year.
It’s our tradition at First Person that our First Person has the last word. And so with that I’d like to turn back to Freddie to close today’s program.
FREDDIE TRAUM:
Thank you. Now, my main purpose in talking, when I talk to groups and all that, is not so much about my personal story but what England did in those days. I’d like to read you just a couple things here.
Okay, following Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, on November the 9th, 1938, concerned groups in Britain appealed to the government to try and save the children persecuted by the Nazis. November the 21st, the House of Commons debated the Jewish refugee issue, and on the same day, the government announced its decision to permit an unspecified number of refugees up to the age of 17 from German occupied lands to enter the UK as trans-migrants. A bond of fifty pound sterling had to be posted for each child. The first Kindertransport arrived in the UK on December second.
On December the 8th, 1938, the former Prime Minster, Stanley Earl Baldwin, issued a radio appeal with these words: “I ask you to come to the aid of victims not of any catastrophe in the natural world, not of an earthquake nor a floor nor famine, but of an explosion of man’s inhumanity to man.” By summer of 1939, more than 500,000 pound sterling had been contributed to the Lord Baldwin Fund.
And here the last bit is: in the forward of a book about the Kindertransport, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote, “1939 was a bleak year for Europe. There are not many good stories to tell about international cooperation then. There is, though, one major exception: the story of Kindertransport.”
Now this falls in line with a Museum theme: what we do matters. What each and every person does matters. So I just wanted to share that thought with you. Thank you all for coming and listening to me.
