Joshua Hardesty Mr.

Neuburger Eng102-106 23 March 2012 Interviews with Ursula Levy and Ellen Brandt Ursula Levy was born in Germany and was born on May 11, 1935. Her immediate family was: Max her father Lucia her mother and George her brother. Her father went to a concentration camp with his brother after Kristallnacht they both were captured November 11 1938. Both her father and her uncle died from exposure and from gang green. Before they were captured her family ran a textile business. Ursulas mother was not as religious as her fathers side of the family and she never really considered herself as a Jew. After Kristallnacht Ursulas mother wrote a letter to her brother in law in attempt to get her children out of Germany. Her mother was torn between the choice of sending her children away to Holland by themselves and keeping them in Germany. Then her mother did send Ursula and her brother to Holland. After staying in a large home the two were taken to a convent to be fed and gain weight. Her and her brother lived in the convent for four years. Then the Jews at the convent were eventually sent to a concentration camp and she and her brother stayed there for two years. A priest grew fond with Ursula and her brother and wrote to her mother and asked for permission to baptize them and her mother allowed the two to be baptized. In 1940 the Germans came into Holland and Holland quickly fell. The convent had to hand over the Jewish children and then they were taken to the camps starting in 1941.

She was taken and at was first separated from her brother. On her birthday she was taken to see the commandant of the camp and in the office was a man and he brought her a box of chocolates for her birthday. The man in the office lied to the commandant and told him that their father was actually in America. Ursula and her brother were then placed in a privileged barracks with the Jewish diamond cutters. Because of this lie Ursula and her brother were never sent to Auschwitz. In January of 1944 Ursula and her brother were taken to Bergen-Belsen. They were in a section of the camp called the star camp which was another privileged portion of the camp. Some of the privileges included she got to keep her own clothes and was able to stay with her brother. While at Bergen-Belsen they did not do much there most of the time they just stood in formation. She said that she never got hit and she did not work at the camp but mostly she just vegetated every day. One of her most vivid memories of the camp was the French women and that of the other prisoners who just lay there and slowly died. While she was in Bergen-Belsen the only things that she thought about was potatoes and escaping the camp. They were given what they were told an injection of a typhoid vaccine. They were then put onto a train for thirteen days. On this train they just circled around and they never thought about escape. Then one morning they woke up and people were shouting, We are free, but most did not move in reaction. Then after they looked outside they saw the Russians capturing the remaining German guards. Ursula and her brother moved in to a house with another couple and their children. They took a cart and started to go through other houses and collect food from the abandoned houses of the Germans. Both Ursula and her brother contracted typhus. They stayed in this German town until about June. The two of them returned to the convent where they stayed before going to the

camps. This is where they learned that their mother had died of typhus at her own concentration camp. After this her aunt and uncle in Chicago adopted the two kids and the process took two years.

Ellen Brandt was born on May 10 1922 she was born in Munhien, Germany. She lived in Munich when she was 6 months old there her father bought a paper factory and they lived in Munich until January 1933. Her father decided to leave Munich and moved to Berlin, Germany. In Munich she lived in an upscale neighborhood. She was an only child because it was said her mother was too old to have any more children. Her uncle brought his general manager and offered her dad a job in America but then he was taken aside and was told about the antiSemitism that occurred in America and had decided not to take the job and move to America. Hitler was also a neighbor of Ellen while they lived in Munich. The Jewish faith played little in her life while growing up. She and her family celebrated Christmas and Easter as a child, although her father did celebrate Yom Kippur every year. After moving to Berlin her father took a job working for an Aryan company instead of owning his own company, because as Ellen says, They could see the hand writing on the wall. As a ten year old Ellen was told that she had to watch what she said in and outside the home, she was also surprised when she made it to America when people were criticizing the president. In early 1934 a friend of her fathers was the first person she knew to die in a work camp. He was imprisoned because the Nazis wanted to take his estate and his factory. In 1935 the Nuremberg laws were passed it banned Jews from being a teacher, public servants, or even from performing instruments in public. For an entire year Ellen did not wear a dress. Whenever you joined the Hitler Youth you did not have to go to school on Saturdays,

teachers could not fail you, and you could get into the movies for free. Ellen became very religious at this time she went to temple every Friday night and Saturday. After a meeting of the Bund she realized that they were acting just like Hitler and she did not want that so the next day she quit the Bund. After quitting she stopped being religious and she hasnt gone to temple since. Ellen was given one of the tickets to see the closing ceremony of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After the Olympics Hitler passed new edicts banning Jews from marrying Aryans and then the teachers could no longer talk to the Jewish students in her class. The Jewish students were all placed together and sat in the back row. Ellen was not able to talk to the non-Jewish students who were her friends or allowed to play with the Aryans at recess. After that she was taken out of the schools and was entered into a private Jewish school and Ellen did not like going to the private Jewish school. In April 1938 Ellen and her parents left Germany to go to America. This is how Ellen and her family to escape from Germany. It took five years for her uncle to get all the paper work for the three of them to immigrate to America. They were also the first people off of the boat.