I was born in Bingen on the Rhine, Germany in 1927.  In 1933, I was 6 years old when the Nazis were coming to power.  I was the only Jewish child in my class and was made to feel different from everyone else.  It got worse and my parents had my brother and I attend a Jewish school an hour away by train everyday in another city, Mainz (pronounced Mines).  One day when we arrived in Mines, we were told to go back home.    The Nazis had burned down the school and the synagogue, and the director of the school and his wife had committed suicide.  We returned home to find our own synagogue in flames.  The Germans arrested my father and sent him to a concentration camp.  This was Krystallnacht!

 

My mother worked frantically to get papers to arrange for us to get out of Germany.  We had an uncle who was actually a Supreme Court justice in the State of New York who arranged for us to leave.  

 

In August, 1939, we left for America, one week before the outbreak of World War II.  When our ship sailed passed past the Statue of Liberty, we cried with tears of joy, we were so happy to come to America.