Anne Levy was four years old when the Nazis attacked and occupied Poland in September 1939. Her family survived two years in the Warsaw ghetto. In January 1943, the family escaped the ghetto and survived the rest of the war pretending to be Christians. Anne, her parents, and her younger sister Lila are among the very few Jewish families in Poland who survived the Holocaust. They moved to New Orleans in 1949.
PR If you would be kind enough to tell me when and where you were born?
AL I was born in Lodz, Poland on July 2, 1935. Lived with my mother and father and my sister, a sort of typical middle class life. Remember, the most pleasant time that I remember Sunday afternoon with my father going for ice cream, and balloons, and enjoying things that children enjoy. That was the way, we lived in a very nice apartment, a large building. My father had his own a business that he, lumber business which his family was in. My mother was a house wife. She even had help for my sister and I. Typical people as we would think of middle class American.
PR And you took vacations. And there's one lovely photo of you and Lila, your sister, at the beach.
AL We did, we have a couple of pictures that were saved. That was in the countryside. My parents always teased me: I was a dare devil. There was big German Shepard there in the country and I had no fear. I would go into the dog house with German Shepard. It was good times. I was not afraid. Maybe it made me a better person for that in the long run that I was not afraid.
PR And then comes the first of September 1939 when the Germans, unannounced, attack Poland. And Lodz, located in western Poland, is quickly over-run. The Germans arrive in Lodz on the 7th of September. Your father flees to Russia, believing that they won't harm the women and children. I wonder if you can recall those impressions of the early days of the Nazi occupation?
AL My first memories of that the beginning of war is when everybody in house that was there was very upset crying and looking out the window. Out of curiosity I did too there was large reform orthodox temple across the street. And everybody was upset because the Germans were taking out all the prayer shawls and prayer books and putting them in a heap in front of synagogue and finally torched it. This is how I remember the beginning of the war.
PR Your mother dictated a memoir and in it she says that the Germans handed out cookies and candy to the non-Jewish population who stood and watched as the synagogue burned.
AL Well, that was for their propaganda. To show people that everything was all right for them. It was a happy time for them. It was a hard time for the Jewish population.
PR And do you remember that first day when you were ordered to wear a armband with the Star of David?
AL Well, my mother was sitting there having to sew the star on and we were actually wearing it on front and back. So we if went outside you were forced to wear. So who ever saw you in street would know you were Jews. My sister in stroller had to have Star of David. Star of David yellow Jude Jew in middle. So no matter if you were two and a half or you were eighty you had to wear it if you were outside.
PR And this was the first time that you recognized that you were Jewish?
AL I never thought of myself as anything other than, just as child. Jewish didn't mean that much. We were assimilated Jews. My parents were assimilated. We didn't wear outer garments that obviously you would know we were Jewish. We looked like everybody else. You'll see the pictures. Looked like any other normal Polish children. Except that we were Jewish.
PR Now you were different.
AL Very different. That's when the difference began. That's when I felt we were different. And being Jewish was something that caused grief. And you know was just part of the struggle that began.
PR And you were expelled from your apartment by the Nazis.
AL Well, when my father left the three of us together, my sister, my mother and I, she received orders we had to vacate the premises. It was such a large building it would be taken over by the Germans. She had a couple hours before to clear out make sure the linen on the bed was changed. And the table was set for company. She was only able to take two little suitcases with her to carry for my sister and I and herself. It was a terrible, terrible time for her. Having to leave everything that she owned and not knowing what happen. I can't imagine the feelings she had to go thru.
PR You had an uncle in Warsaw, Henry Tempelhof. He was a mechanical engineer. His wife was a doctor. And so your mother made the decision, without your father present, to go to Warsaw, that it was perhaps safer in Warsaw. And when you left Lodz your mother said, we left this place with a big scar in our heart. You arrived in Warsaw and arrived at the Warsaw ghetto.
AL Well, actually my father tried to get us back to Russia. But we never made it. My sister was ill. Mother became frightened and decided to go to Warsaw. And when we went to Warsaw the ghetto was there. And all the Jews in one, more and more Jews into Warsaw ghetto. She went there because my sister was ill. I imagine by having a sister in law who was a physician she thought we'd be better off there. Of course it turned out to be the worst place that we could have gone to. How describe the Warsaw ghetto? In the beginning she would work. In the beginning we stayed with her family. She wanted to be independent. She found room where we would stay. The three of us. For food she decided that she would work and she would collect whoever had cooked something that night. She would go from one room to another and collect in a pot whatever people had. If had potato, carrot, what had cabbage that night. On in one pot. Tried to share it with people who didn't have anything.
PR In the middle of the Warsaw ghetto your mother established a welfare agency.
AL That was her way. She, it was trying to work. Everybody had to work. This was her way of doing something good. And feeding all of us. Food became such a precious possession. That we didn't have it and there were times when you had to stand in line to go get ration of bread that she would receive and one time she told us she came back she had received her bread and was just leaving when someone starving came up to her and stole her bread and that was all she had to feed Lila and I. I can't imagine at this stage of my life as a mother and a grandmother, when children tell you they're hungry and want something to eat and you have nothing to give them. It's very hard for me to understand how she did it.
PR There were almost 500,000 Jewish people in Warsaw ghetto and quarter died of starvation.
AL Well, I know exactly how they felt because as we lived in Warsaw ghetto it was progressively getting worse and worse. The atrocities in streets were horrendous. You could look out the window and you would see dead bodies in the street, you would see a wagon picking up corpses and trying to clean up. The worst thing I remember people that just dropped in street. They were dead. But because they had socks or shoe, pants or some kind of clothing on somebody passing by we see these articles dead body he doesn't need, cover up the body with newspaper and take possession anything the poor soul had.
PR Clothing.
AL Anything. And to this day the worst thing I can see is somebody putting a newspaper over themselves because it just brings back the memory. This is what we saw. And people, children, were starving.
PR And you were on the verge of death and all of a sudden your father returned.
AL I wouldn't be sitting here telling story if he hadn't shown up.
PR He smuggled himself into the Warsaw ghetto coming from Russia when the war between Germany and Russia broke out. It was a Saturday morning, your mother wrote, in December 1941.
AL And she went to the door and passed out because of the shock. It was two years that we were separated. By this time my sister and I like the rest of the population emaciated from hunger. We were at the point just sitting around in bed not moving a lot because of weakness. And I remember my father saying that when he saw us he was afraid to touch us. He was afraid to touch us because we looked so frail. He brought us back to life. He brought bread, butter, and he cut up bread little cubicles. Gave us that a little at time, knowing full well if he gave too much stomach not used that we would become ill. That's reason when I say what happened to us I wouldn't be here if he hadn't. My mother and sister and I would have perished as every one else did.
PR Indeed, he did not even recognize you.
AL He had a hard time. Like I say he had a hard time recognizing us with the condition we in.
PR And your father was a wizard with his hands. He had golden hands. He could create anything. And so he gets a job in a German factory in the Warsaw ghetto, becomes a manager. But then the raids begin and he and your mother are at the factory and to protect you he fashioned a false bottom in a chest. And you and Lila your sister would stay in that.
AL Well, it was, my mother called it a vegetable bin. A chest that would hold things. You lifted top and you would store things in it. My father put all rags old newspapers on top so if lifted it, it didn't look very nice. But underneath he had built two little chairs, benches two little seats and a potty and when they went to work, they left with us whatever they had some water, whatever bread they had, and they put us into this furniture, and put it against the wall and go to work. If you ask me today how did we do this, it's very hard for me to explain. Having grandchildren it's not very easy to keep children quiet. Different time and place. Children in Europe supposed to be seen and not heard. As my mother later on in life tried to explain told two obedient daughters. And I think it was, we knew. We grew up very fast and realized that this was a matter life and death. That we had to be quiet. Just any time we wanted to. Once we were in there we had to be quiet. There were times because when everybody went to work. Older people, or able people go to work. The Germans would come through building. You could hear them walking up the stairs. You could hear them talking. Yet we weren't found. I always think back, had they brought with them the German dogs, Shepards, of course we would have been found. But somebody was looking over us and they didn't. And my parents would come back and at night we'd be with them. There were many things you can't explain, that for some reason I think the Almighty was looking over us.
PR Did you think that God was on your side during the war?
AL As a child during the war I never thought of God. I think in my later years now I look at it as, my mother talked to God all the time, and she really believed in talking to God and she believed that that's what brought her through, what helped her survive and deal with. Now at my age when I look at was a miracle. Things did happen for a reason. And the only way you could explain it was God was watching over us.
PR And then the final liquidation of the ghetto commences and in January 1943, your father through his connections, namely a Polish non-Jewish military officer, arranges for you all to be taken out of the ghetto hidden in a garbage truck. And suddenly you're on the Aryan side of the ghetto, outside ghetto. And you have arranged to find lodging with a Polish Christian family.
AL Well, this is where Righteous Gentiles. This mother and daughter must have been in her twenties they took us in. They didn't have a very large place. But there was enough room for us to move in. They made an excuse to their neighbors that family from countryside. That would explain why we where there. The problem there was we were to live as Christians Catholics. Live like the two women. I'm olive complected. I had dark curly hair. Sister is fair. Still is. Lighter hair. She looked very Polish. I looked Jewish. So there was a problem, if people would notice me I would give everyone away. The Poles would be killed as we would be as we would be having us.
PR That was the Nazi penalty. Giving shelter to a Jew invited death for you and your family.
AL That was the ultimate crime that you could commit. So my mother would take my sister out, my father found job and he went work. Mother take sister and make believe. They did go to church and go shopping. With me I stayed inside. If company came, I would have to hide in a single door armoire and sit in there until company left. They tried to even dye my hair. They took some old bark off tree. Boiled it real hot, I mean boiled water. And tried to dye my hair. Well, it didn't work. My mother feeling sorry for me. Not getting fresh air, not getting out. Night when it was dark. She would put a babushka on my head. She would put me on the balcony. I did this a few nights. One day the woman across the street. Noticed that I was sitting out there only at night. Went to janitor. Told him. She noticed we must be hiding Jews there what was happening. And that unless they reported us, she would. And of course father came from work and heard the news. Panic set in. We would all be demised, Poles as well. But because of his golden hands' and such a good worker. He went to his boss who owned a lumber yard and explained to him that we no longer stay in apartment because other family members were coming. And would he allow him to put us in lumber yard. Build a shed that was in the back. He also would be able to be a watchman. And this what he did. The boss did let us move in. He batched up real fast. Little hut black tar paper no lights. We moved in.
PR And the owner of the lumber yard suspected you were Jewish but looked the other way.
AL He definitely did. As we had false papers. My parents never changed their name. The last name was Skoreki. Which was a very Polish name. Yet the name was known in lumber business. My father's family was known for lumber, and somebody evidentially questioned him. Why do you have this man Skoreki? He did. He looked the other way. Not till after the war did my father know that this man knew.
PR So many miracles.
AL Unexplainable. Makes you think why us? Why not somebody else? You just can't explain some of these things.
PR Anne, your parents saved you but in a sense you and Lila saved them, because you gave them a reason to continue struggling.
AL I think that's true. I never thought of it like that. But they had a reason through all this horrible things time they went. All the decisions. They were just one step ahead of us getting caught. It's true. They had an incentive. They had a reason to go on. Not give up.
PR It was easier to die than to live.
AL It was. It was.
PR So finally the war comes to an end. The Soviet Army arrives. The Germans flee to the west. And your mother goes to register after the war.
AL Well, she went back to Lodz to see. First of all to register but when registered people would come in and see who survived, put your name on list and people everyday come by and check the list. When she went to register, she said, I had a husband and two children. They looked at her like she was made. The Germans killed million half children. There were no children. My sister and me oddity. She actually had to bring us to office and prove that we were her children. Can imagine what felt like? They survived. They could be free and admit. And people didn't believe.
PR After the war you lived a number of years in a German village, ironically, and then in 1949 you come to New Orleans. In Poland you had been persecuted because of religion, and in New Orleans you could ride in the front of the bus because of your white skin.
AL I never thought of myself as a superior class and yet Here I was, we call ourselves New Americans, I worked at this time and I was riding buses back and forth and the little plaque that said colored only, people would get on the bus much older and I was brought up to give elders your seat. You're the young one. Someone older comes in, and you're supposed to be polite. I couldn't do it. It was impossibly hard. I could sit anywhere. To move it was very hard to move that sign so I could sit in that seat. Because as long as that sign was there, no matter how many empty seats behind me, the blacks could not sit there.
PR You had developed a sensitivity to people that those born here perhaps did not have. I wonder, coming from a world that was destroyed, what message you have for people here in this world which often seems to be on the verge racial destruction?
AL It really hurts, and my only contribution is, knowing what it feels like to be persecuted for being Jewish, the same thing goes for black, to teach the younger people, to teach in schools, what tolerance is all about. You have to embrace, and be willing to listen to the other side. I mean, we're all the same. And it's a matter of teaching the younger people to be tolerant. Just because you believe in a different God, just because your skin is black or white, if we could ever, ever come to the point that we would judge a person who they are, rather than look, or what God they believe in.