Fritz, Renee_1993/07/29, Oral History, July 29, 1993

Oral History – Renee Fritz of Bloomfield, CT Interviewed by Charlotte Berman 7/29/93

“Hidden Child” Talks to Charlotte Berman about WWII Experiences

CB: This is a test as I approach the home of Mrs. Renee Fritz of Bloomfield, Connecticut. Renee was a “Hidden Child” in Vienna during World War II years and it is my pleasure and of great interest to all those who will be hearing this tape at the special Holocaust Survivors Exhibit and permanent exhibit at the Jewish Center to hear the story of Renee Fritz’s life during those years of great trauma and I will begin by asking her several questions. ____

CB: This is Charlotte Berman speaking in an interview with Renee Fritz, Mrs. Renee Fritz, of Bloomfield, Connecticut, one of the “Hidden Children” of the Holocaust and I’m doing this interview at her home on July 28th, 1993. This, as far as I know, will be the first interview to be recorded for the Jewish Historical Society’s special new, permanent exhibit of Holocaust Survivors. Welcome, Mrs. Fritz, may I call you Renee?

RF: Definitely.

CB: Well, Renee has told me a little bit about her life during this traumatic time and she also belongs to a few groups of children survivors of the Holocaust, some in New York, some in Connecticut. And Renee has been going to many groups, some Jewish, some Christian and telling her story, her heartfelt story. And for that I thank you and the Jewish community thanks you. But, uh, from what I have heard Renee was born in Vienna and eventually was brought to Belgium where those years of hiding took place. So I’m going to let Renee tell you her own story and I will break in with some questions. Renee, would you please continue.

RF: During the time span of 1939 to1945, thousands of Jewish children across Europe escaped Adolf Hitler’s plan for systematic genocide. They hid in basements, sewers, joined Christian families and took refuges in convents, monasteries and orphanages, where they concealed their identities from all but a few. The children were witnesses of one of the darkest periods in history. They felt guilty for being alive when a staggering six million Jews perished around them including more than 1.5 million children. Psychologists here agree that hiding was often quite traumatic, leaving their lives blemished, scarred, tormented, anguished and mystifying and robbing a generation of it’s childhood. The simplicity of everyday life for a young Jewish girl was substituted because of mitigating circumstances. Instead of playing with dolls it was learning to recite the Rosary. Instead of singing it was learning prayers. Instead of going to school it was hiding. Instead of being with friends and family they plotted evading the Gestapo spontaneous searches and experienced constant isolation. Relating back, I would like to share with you a poignant story of a little girl with whom I became intimately acquainted in the year 1937. The setting is Vienna, Austria. The child, an only child, born to Nicholas and Sabina Schwab, a middle class family, whose comfortable existence ended when Nicholas was abruptly arrested. His crime? He was a Jew. Hitler’s troops entered Austria in 1938 announcing the Anschluss, or annexation, of that country. Two days later, in Vienna, Jews soon learned that they were targets. Nicholas Schwab, a retailer, was arrested and fell into the hands of the enemy, deserting his young daughter and wife. His family fled to Belgium, where they joined other relatives. After a few months they left for Calais, France hoping to catch a ship to America. The French Resistance turned them away because they spoke German. After spending weeks in jail trying to convince the French that they were not German sympathizers, they were finally released and returned to Brussels. Rumors were that Jewish people, caught with their children, would automatically perish. Sabina Schwab, through a connection, made arrangements for her family members to be hidden in the confined quarters of Madame Dejolasse’s home. The safety here proved to be only short term. It became apparent that a mother and child separation was inevitable for survival. The child was separated from her mother and with the assistance of Madame Dejolasse, entered a Catholic convent, at the age of three, in the year 1940. The little girl’s name was changed to Suzanne and she was only to answer to her new name Soeur Maman or the Mother Superior told her. She told the child that she was gonna go to church and showed her all the nice medals she would get if she knew the right prayers and the right things to say. Suzanne was told that St. Suzanne Day would celebrate her birthday. She didn’t know what a birthday was but , the Mother Superior, gave her a huge safety pin and told her every time she knew another prayer she would get another medal. As time went on Suzanne quickly assimilated with her new church life. Her Yiddish and German tongue converted to French and Flemish. Existence within the convent was strict, lonely and intimidating. Suzanne was assigned to a nun and told never to go anywhere without her. She and the nun shared a space in a dormitory and went to church together. She spoke to no one else and saw no other children except those who came to day school from the town. But she wasn’t allowed to mingle with them.

CB: Excuse me.

RF: Yes?

CB: Renee, I just wanted to ask you a question that just arose in my mind. Did you ever question, even at that tiny age, two or three or four, where is my mother, where is my father? Why aren’t I home, why am I here? And did, did any of the other nuns do any questioning of you or did they know you were that Jewish child to be secreted there?

RF: Uh, I never really questioned anyone because I never with my mother for such a long period of time. I was so used to being moved all the time from place to place and from person to person that, you know, even the word mother, I didn’t even know what it meant. And as far as the other nuns in the convent I believe that only the nun who took care of me and the Mother Superior knew that I was Jewish. Therefore, I was really guarded by this one nun all the time and I really never spoke to anyone unless spoken to. And the nun who took care of me was with me so, I mean, constantly, that it, you know, none of these events never happened.

CB: Do you remember her name? RF: I cannot remember her name, that I cannot. I can picture her in front of me but I can’t remember her name at all.

CB: I’m sorry, go ahead.

RF: Okay. The motivating factors of survival were the daily prayers and the religious experiences, and Suzanne’s dependence and security became her religious medals and rosary beads, which slowly strengthened Suzanne’s security blanket. Abruptly, in 1943, just when some stability was occurring, once again it became imperative that Suzanne be uprooted and taken to a farm family in the Belgian countryside by a strange man in the middle of the night; another new environment with no emotional ties for a young child to handle. During these unsettling times all Europeans reactions were instant fear, for their own lives and the lives of their kin. No one was to be spared, regardless of their religious commitment, if they were guilty of concealing Jews. Suspicion arose and Suzanne was moved quickly. She was destined, still for another home, in 1944. Now a Protestant orphanage in Namure (sp?) Belgium. Confused and bewildered, the irony and the agony of this little girl’s life continued. With Nazi headquarters across the street from the orphanage, the feeling of being a criminal in hiding was surfacing day by day in addition to the feeling of hunger and cold. Survival, even at the orphanage, for Suzanne was waning.

CB: I must interject, again. By this time you must have been convinced that you were Suzanne, a Catholic little girl and, uh, that you, you felt it in your core including your St. Suzanne’s birthday you celebrated. Then why did you feel this feeling, this terror across the street from the Nazis. Was it because everybody knew that they were evil, whether you were Christian or Jewish?

RF: Well, just the fact that they were across the street and they were in uniforms.

CB: Um, hmm.

RF: I think.

CB: Menacing.

RF: Yes, right. It was terribly, you know terribly frightening.

CB: Of course.

RF: And, uh, I really feel that that’s what did it.

CB: Don’t blame you. Continue.

RF: I would like to share with you this one little story that I learned. While Suzanne was at the convent, the observance of a special day, which was St. Suzanne Day, would be significant due to the fact that it was a saint’s day in the convent. The saint’s day became important while at the orphanage because on that day, when Suzanne exclaimed “It’s my birthday!”, she was rewarded with a box biscuits. To most of us here a box of biscuits would not be very exciting. If you were starving, any holiday where food would be offered as a gift, you would celebrate it also. At the termination of the war, in 1945, the Americans took over many Nazi headquarters, in particular, the one adjacent to the orphanage, the home of Suzanne LeDan (sp?). With an adoption by an American soldier from New Orleans near completion, Suzanne, now eleven years old, was miraculously reunited with her mother who had somehow survived Auschwitz. Mother and daughter returned to an apartment provided by the Refugee Relief Sources. With minimal rations and a cold stove for heat they recovered from starvation and disease. In 1939, Nicholas Schwab was released from prison. On the assumption that his family had perished during the war he embarked on a journey to a new homeland, taking the last ship out of Austria and arriving in a new homeland, Montreal, Canada. His next stop was the United States, to Manchester, Connecticut, the home of distant cousins. With the help of the International Red Cross, Suzanne and her mother were eventually reunited with Suzanne’s father. Unbelievable as it may sound, after losing total communication for eleven years, they were reunited in the United States in 1950, when Suzanne was thirteen years old. For the teenager Suzanne it was simply another move, another country, another way of life. The endless cycle had begun again. You ask yourself the question “When experiences are that traumatic will you remember them?”. My name is Suzanne LeDan Renee Schwab Fritz. At the age of two and a half my mother giving away possessions for food, like a pocketbook. In fact it was a brown pocketbook. I survived but was not untouched. While the loss of childhood carries unique memories of this long, dark period in history many of our stories are too valuable to be forgotten. We need to clarify why we see the world the way we do and we need to tell our children and their children about our well kept and long-hidden secrets. We bear witness to the Holocaust and remember the voices that were silenced.

CB: On behalf of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford and all the people in that Society I want to thank you very much, Renee, for sharing that, that very intimate and very wonderful, poignant picture of your youth. And I, as Elie Wiesel said, that “We mustn’t be silenced”, and Renee Fritz isn’t silenced and she is going throughout the community, the region, and even into the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. where she was chosen to record her story. And so we know, that to both Jew and Gentile, this moving story of a young girl is told and retold and for this we thank you very much, Renee.

RF: Thank you very much, Charlotte.