Lazowski, Ruth and Phillip_2008/2/15, Oral History, February 15, 2008

Lazowski_Philip and Ruth_1994

Interviewees: Philip and Ruth Lazowski Interviewers: Interview Location: Interview Date: Interview Audio Location: (Box 40_Number 1065) Transcription by: Janet Poitras

AP = Dr. Avi Noam Patt BH = Dr. Betty Hoffman PL = Philip Lazowski RL = Ruth Lazowski

Side One

RL: My mother said, briefly, you want me to tell you briefly?

BH: Sure, tell us briefly.

RL: You want me to talk? (To Philip) (Laughter)

AP: It’s always more than what’s in the book.

RL: In 1941 we were put in a ghetto and then the Jewish people who lived in smaller towns were put into our town in the ghetto, too.

AP: Which town was this?

RL: My town was called Zhetel which is Dzyatlava now.

AP: I’ll just interject. I wrote an entry for the Holocaust Museum on Zhetel.

RL: Okay.

AP: Because of the resistance and the partisan movement.

RL: Exactly. My town was called Zhetel and Philip’s town was called Galitsia which was about thirty miles away and the Germans put the Jews from Galitsia into our ghetto. I’m telling you this because usually in town everybody knew everybody else and we didn’t know him and he didn’t know us. So there’s the first selection, where our ghetto was surrounded by many, many Germans and they told everyone to go to the marketplace. And there was my mother, my father, my sister and I. I was at that time seven and my sister was five. And my father said “Let’s go to the marketplace”. So we went to the marketplace and there was, in my husband’s book you’ll read about it, there was shoving. Anyway, my father and mother were separated. Now my mother was holding a certificate because before the war my mother was a pharmacist and we owned a drugstore in Zhetel. And my father was in the lumber business with my grandfather but he was husky, tall man who also had a certificate that he could work. So we’re standing in line getting closer to the German who went with his finder right, left, right, left, to live or to die, and because of all the shoving my father was separated. So my mother was standing and my sister and I. A little boy comes over to my mother saying “Would you tell the German I am your son?”. And my mother said to him, and he went, that’s my husband, he went to quite a few people to ask but a lot of people were afraid, but my mother said “If they let me live with two small children, they’ll let me live with three”.

And she took his hand, you know, I think he held onto one side of her, and then even a little incident I remember. When you were ten years or older you had to wear the Jewish star and there was one here and one in the back, and his torn off a little. My mother somehow found a safety pin and pinned it up because she knew he would be hit by the Germans if it wasn’t. So the German, my father was already on the side to live. And he noticed my mother and he said “My Mann”, I mean my mother said “My Mann” and my father said “This is my Frau”. And they were holding the certificates. Anyway they looked at us and they let us go on the side to live. He was with us. We didn’t know who he was. We didn’t even know what town he came from. And then we stayed there another half an hour. The people they wanted to kill they out on trucks and they told us to go back to our homes. So he went to his house, and in the book you can read about him, what happened.

And then my sister became ill about two weeks later, and there was a doctor in the ghetto, and my mother and my sister were walking on the street. And the doctor lived on the street where he lived. He looked out the window and he noticed my mother. And on the way back, by the way, his family at that point hid in a hiding place so they all survived. He was alone in there because he didn’t have enough time to get into the hiding place because the Germans came. So his mother came out and blessed my mother and she told, at that point he found out my mother’s name was Miriam Rabinowitz, and we found out that he came from the town of Galitsia. Maybe we knew the name but my mother didn’t really remember. She just knew that he came from Galitsia.

Now we’re liberated. This is more to tell if you want to, but then in 1953, I was a senior in high school. I had a friend, and we lived in Italy for, in fact this is the friend right here, this one. This friend of mine came to New York and we came to Hartford, Connecticut because our relatives were here. And she came to visit, and I asked her to stay for the weekend. And she said she can’t because she’s going to a wedding from people from the town of Galitsia. So my mother said to her “You know I once saved a boy from Galitsia.”

BH: It’s unbelievable. That miraculous story.

RL: So they go to the wedding and they put my friend next to him, you know how they put the young people at the same table? And they started talking and she was also a survivor and she says “I have a friend in Hartford, Connecticut. Her mother saved a boy’s life from Galitsia. Her name is Miriam Rabinowitz”. So he said PL: “Hi there!”

RL: So he said “I’m the boy!” And the rest is

BH: So he came up to visit you then.

RL: He didn’t come to visit me. He came to see my mother, right. And then there was, you know

AP: It’s really bashev (sp?), right.

BH: And this story which I read from both of your is the way I would end the book with this positive story of this new family and finding each other. Ruth, tell us what it was like after you were in the forests, then liberation.

RL: We were liberated in 1944. I think it was August, right Philip, 1944 by the Russians. We were liberated in the woods not too far from Zhetel. We were not “petaska pusha” (sp?), you may know if you’re writing about the partisnas. We were actually not with the partisans. We were family groups because we had children. Any my father, because he was in the lumber business, he saved about 36 people. They all wanted to go with him because first of all, we had friends who were farmers who helped my father with food or telling us the German was in this part of the woods the Germans went through. And my father said “If they were here today they’re not going to come back again” so we used to move. And my father said :You know, we should separate, because we can be safer”. They didn’t want to move so we just moved together. We were there for two and a half years until August of 1944 we were liberated by the Russians. When we were liberated my father said, and don’t forget, our area from 1939 to ’41 were under the Russians and my father worked for the Russians. So when we were liberated my father says “I’m not staying with the Russians”. And he said, and at point they let Polish citizens leave this area go further into Poland. So we ended up in Lublin. When war was over in May we were in Lublin. And at that point there were …

AP: Emissaries.

RL: Emissaries who came to organize all the, you know, all the refugees and they helped us. Well, in when we get in Lublin, they helped us and my father said “The only place for Jews is in Palestine”. And so we had to cross borders and we went to Italy, illegally. In fact, we went over the Alps.

BH: So how did you get from Lublin to Italy?

RL: That’s why I have to show you something.

BH: Okay, what.

AP: Was there a particular movement? RL: There was a movement. Well, first of all, we were allowed to go back, Greeks were allowed to go back to Salonica, you know that part?

BH: Okay.

RL: So we were supposed to be Greeks. Okay? And the reason I have to show you this picture, that’s why. Okay? This picture is the front of my mother’s drugstore. That’s me, my sister and a friend of mine who was killed. When we were going as Greeks first of all we couldn’t speak anything and we couldn’t have any kind of affidavit that we were not Greeks. We couldn’t have anything that said, you know. But this was written in Polish I think … meaning pharmacy so my father cut this off. But somehow I think they look through all our papers, okay? And there was something else written in Polish over here. Okay?

AP: Hmm.

RL: And they said “No, you cannot take this picture”. And my father said “I want this picture”. So he tore it because he had no scissors. So this is why I wanted to show you this picture.

AP: So you could have been little Greek children.

RL: Yeah, right. Although in Greece you don’t get dressed that warm. So we went as Greeks, and then we were.

AP: Did you try to speak Hebrew so they thought it was Greek?

RL: Yes, yes. That’s the only language that we did try to speak but you couldn’t, did you also go to the Greeks too?

BH: Oh, you were also a Greek.

AP: Did you also join the … from Lublin?

PL: No, we were in Badgastein (sp?).

RL: No, before Badgastein (sp?), Philip.

PL: Oh, before Badgastein? From Poland to Badgastein (sp?) we were going as Greeks.

BH: Why don’t we finish this story and we’ll come back.

RL: Okay. So we ended up

AP: I’m just curious about one thing.

RL: Yeah.

AP: Did you join a, was it a youth movement, or who organized you

RL: Because my mother and father were

AP: You went as a family.

RL: As a family. I know we lived in Lublin from probably we lived in Lublin about six months. And not only this. At that point we had a cousin who lived in Vilna and he and his mother survived and they found out, somehow they found out we were alive, and they came from another town in Poland to see us. I think this is where people put their names in different papers and that’s how we found each other. And then we went to Hungary. Then we went, we crossed the Italian Alps at night, with a guide.

BH: Did you walk over the Alps?

RL: We walked over the Alps. And I must tell you a funny incident. When we came after the war, when we came from the woods, my grandparents and parents buried some valuables. Part of it was a little bit of jewelry and also some silverware, forks and knives, you know? So, and that was about all that was left. So my mother said, my mother wouldn’t part with it. My father was carrying it over the Alps, holding on to us, and he kept on yelling “Manya, throw it away. What do you need it for? It’s too heavy to carry.”

(Laughter)

RL: And my mother said “No, no, no, that’s all I have left”. You know?

BH: And so he did.

RL: In fact I have a few pieces still here. But this is, you know, you held on to whatever you, we really had nothing left but this was something she wouldn’t want to get rid of.

So we came to Italy. In Italy we ended up in, as I say, I told you, my father said a Jew should only live in Palestine. No other place. So we ended up in Santa Maria di Leuca, which is the very tip.

BH: How do you, tell me again?

RL: Santa

BH: S-a-n-t-a

RL: Maria di Leuca, L-e-u-c-a, I think.

BH: And that’s down way in the bottom of the boot?

RL: Not the hell but the toe. I mean not the toe but the heel, not next to Naples but the other way. Next to Bari. You know, you heard of Bari?

BH: Yes.

AP: And the Brucha (sp?)

RL: And the Brucha (sp?), and from there it was aliabet, legal immigration. But, my sister as I told you, when I get to Italy I was nine, well I was nine and Toby was seven and we waited and we waited and they wouldn’t take us, and a lot of people ended up in Cypress, and they would not take families with children. So we stayed there but at that point we started school. We started Hebrew School. We started with kids of different ages. I had no education at all until I came to Italy.

And then we stayed there about sis months and I guess we weren’t able to go to Palestine so we went to Rome. And we ended up in Rome ‘til 1948. In fact when it was Yom Ha'atzmaut, Independence Day, the first Independence Day, and this I must tell you a story about it. I used to teach Hebrew School and I’m teaching them about the Holocaust and I’m opening up a history about how Israel, how Palestine, there is a picture of all the Jews of Rome gathering in front of Titus’ Arch.

AP: Wow.

RL: And the reason was because like when we went to Italy, went to school in Italy, although it was Hebrew but we learned Ancient History and everything, so we used to go to different places, but none of us would go to Titus’ Gate. The reason for it because he destroyed the Temple and when you go inside you can see carrying the menorah

AP: Exiled from Jerusalem.

RL: In 1948, the first day of independence, all the Jews of Rome gathered in front of Titus’ Gate and we walked the other way.

AP: The symbolism.

RL: Right.

AP: Wow, that’s amazing.

RL: And I want you to know, and I brought my own pictures because I have pictures from that time. I said you know, of course you couldn’t see me in the crowd, but I said to my students I was there!.

BH: And did they believe you? RL: Yeah, they did believe it. Later on I brought actual pictures that we personally took. And then what happened was, in the meantime, we couldn’t get to Palestine, and my father puts an ad in the paper saying Morris Rabinowitz from this town is looking for Minnie Berman. He knew he had an aunt, his father’s sister, was here but we didn’t know where she lived. But somehow, I have a feeling he put it in The Forward but I’m not sure. And Minnie Berman lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey and she started writing. Our whole family started writing “What are you going to do with two small children in Palestine. We want you to come here.”

AP: There’s a war going on.

RL: And the war and all this so then they said “In that case, we’ve got the visas, when Israel became a country we already had the visas and we came here instead of going to Palestine.

BH: I had just one procedural question. When you were going as Greeks did you go by train?

RL: By train.

BH: By train.

RL: I know we went by train from Russia to Poland, you know.

BH: Did you have any trouble coming over the Alps? Did people have a hard time, were there guards?

RL: No, no, we went illegal. Nobody saw.

BH: Nobody saw you.

RL: We went at night with a guide.

PL: All the guides were paid off.

(Everyone agreed)

They brought some cash to make sure that

AP: A lot of the cash came from joint distribution

BH: Joint distribution

RL: You know I don’t know the details but

BH: They did. RL: I know we had a guide and it was at night and we walked all of us and we came to Italy.

BH: And with the children as well?

RL: With the children, right?

BH: So did you meet Palestinian Jews, either of you?

RL: Yes, of course. I have. The teachers when we were in Santa Maria di Leuca there was a teacher, a … representative. And we actually started, the school I went to in Italy was everything Hebrew, the main language. Every subject was taught in Hebrew. Don’t ask me how I really learned Hebrew because at home we spoke Yiddish, you know? So even if we learned Ancient History it was in Hebrew, if we learned the Bible it was Hebrew. So it was like a Hebrew school in Israel.

AP: It was getting you ready.

BH: To go to Israel. Now it’s time for the pictures.

RL: To go, of course. Yeah, of course. What else we did was, during the summer. First of all Italy was like my childhood came back. We went to camp. And this is the camp that all the kids, different ages, Not too far, I don’t know if you’re too familiar with Italy, with Rome, the Tivoli, you know where that is? The camp is not that far from Tivoli.

AP: This was summer camp.

RL: And this was summer camp. That’s me, right here. It was right before we came here. This is my friend that, you know, that told Philip where we lived. Okay? A very unfortunate part of this story is that a week later my friend went to pick up some clothes in the cleaners on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn and she was killed by a car.

BH: Ah! Unbelievable.

RL: A week later. Okay, so this is my friend Gloria Kavowski. Okay, she survived, her whole family survived in the woods. This one I’m in touch once in a while. This one lives in Canada. This one lives in, where do they live? Close to Bridgeport, right? The rest, these were our teachers.

BH: And they were Palestinian?

RL: No, I don’t know. This one was an Israeli. Then there was one teacher, there was different groups. Here’s my sister, this is my sister right here.

BH: Is she younger?

RL: Yeah, two years younger. And then the rest, in this one there’s also our teacher.

AP: Is this summer of 1947?

RL: Yeah, we came in 1948, this was in 1947. And this picture, I used to teach Hebrew school, this is a kindergarten class before the war, probably 1941, right before the Germans came. That’s me right here, you can’t see too well, and the reason I did this, all the kids here and teachers were killed. I’m the only one who survived. And these are pictures my father kept and this one here my father kept in the wallet. Now this is a picture of us in Lublin after the war, my mother, sister and I. This lady was with us in the woods. This lady I don’t know, she was a friend of my mother’s. This was in Lublin.

BH: So which is your mother?

RL: My mother’s this one. And this is Philip in Austria, and that’s me just before we came to the United States. This was like our passport pictures.

BH: Such nice clothes. You both look good. You’d been eating at that point.

RL: Yeah, yeah, you can see, this is right after liberation.

BH: And your sister’s name is Toby?

RL: Toby, Tanya. And she lives in Brookline, Mass.

BH: Oh! The center of the world according to my daughter, who lived in Sharon.

RL: Oh, yes.

BH: She sees Brookline as the center.

AP: So you ended up in Austria.

RL: He ended up in Austria.

AP: Badgastein (sp?)

BH: Philip, your book was fascinating. It was so interesting. It really, as I read it, I was there with you, and it was just a fascinating story. After you left the forest, when the Russian Army came through, I read about that, what happened in terms of “Brechach (sp?) and getting out, your father decided you and your brother were going.

PL: More or less the story evolves around, we couldn’t stay in Galitsia anymore because there were no Jews there. So we, my brother and I was the only kids that survived. So the father received a position, got a position to work for the Russians. And I went to school there. BH: In Galitsia?

PL: No, in Lida. In Lida we stayed for approximately two years ‘til and then we realized that anti-Semitism is growing and so on, and the Jews got together and said the only way is to leave Russia.

BH: And that was

RL: Philip, you stayed two years after the war?

PL: Yeah, ‘til 19, let’s see, from 1944 ‘til about the beginning of ’46.

RL: Oh, so you really stayed there. We left right away.

PL: Okay, so, and then it became a law that any Polish citizens can leave Russia, that means at that time Lida was Russia, which is close to Vilna and the only way to leave is by claiming we are Polish citizens.

BH: Were you Polish citizens?

RL: Oh, yeah.

BH: You had originally been. You were in that part that went back and forth.

PL: I was born in Poland.

RL: And I was born in Poland.

AP: When were you born?

PL: In 1930.

RL: And I was born in 1935. And it was, you know, Poland.

AP: Independent State of Poland.

PL: So, anyway, from there we moved to Lodz, and in Lodz we started to work with this … and we realized in order to, how many ways to go to Israel. But unfortunately we couldn’t go to Israel as kids at that time. I was fifteen, sixteen and my brother was younger. And we heard all these people trying to get into Palestine were sent back to

RL: Cyprus

PL: And all this kind of business. So we remained in Badgastein for quite a while ‘til we started to school there and so on. And then my father had two sisters and a brother in America. And they found out that we are alive. So they send us visa to come to the United States and that’s how we ended up in the United States.

BH: How did you get from Lodz to Italy?

RL/PL: Austria.

RL: Greeks, right.

PL: Well, we went as Greeks

BH: I love it.

PL: And then we had to cross the Alps as well.

BH: Did you walk across as well?

PL: Yeah.

RL: Did you run into any problems?

PL: We had to sleep over on top of the mountain ‘cause at that time it was snowing there. So we found

RL: A cave?

PL: Some shelter there. The guy brought us over and we stayed for a while ‘til it passed by the snow there. And then from there to Linz.

BH: In Austria.

PL: In Austria. And from Linz they brought us to Badgastein and we stayed in Badgastein for quite a while before we left for the United States.

BH: And from your book I gathered that was an okay place?

RL: Not bad.

PL: It was wonderful. You know Hitler used to come there for his vacation.

AP: In Badgastein.

RL: In Badgastein. That’s a resort location.

AP: A resort location.

RL: You know I have pictures of Zentgen.

AP: Is that one of the hotels?

PL: Yes. Zentgen. I went to visit them. I went there twice.

RL: We went back. One of our sons went back there.

BH: That’s a real contrast to the camps people were in in Berlin.

RL: No, we were, like in our case in Rome, we were in the villa. Villa Latina, next to the Appian Way. I learned to drive a bicycle, to ride a bicycle on the Appian Way. My parents Made us go to the Caracalla Opera every summer because it was so close. It was so close. People ask me why I like opera. I told them they made us go because we were like walking distance of the Caracalla Opera. And so, it’s like I told you my youth came back it was like.

BH: It sounds like once you came into Austria and once you came into Rome things really improved for you.

PL: Well it improved in the sense that, like for instance when we came back from the woods into the town, the first question was “Are you still alive? How could you be?”

BH: How could they ask that, in that tone?

PL: We were still alive in a sense

AP: They were happy to see the Jews gone.

PL: The reason is they lived in our homes.

RL: Right.

PL: In my grandfather’s home. So they had free home, free this. We come back it’s our home. So you see how it is.

AP: They’re still afraid to see Jews coming back.

RL: Oh yeah! We went back to, I went back

AP: They’re afraid the Jews are coming back.

RL: Yeah, we went back to Zhetel, and I found my grandfather’s house, our house, you know. I said I’m not coming

PL: My son went with us into the house and he said “I want to see the house where you live”. So after we give her some dollars she let us in, and tell her we don’t come in here to take the house, we don’t need the house. We just come to visit.

BH: As teenagers, you were younger, you were older, did you feel the stress of waiting, when you were in Austria and Rome, did you feel the stress of waiting that adults would feel or were you just glad to be out of (tape ends – end of sentence not there)

Side Two

RL: protected by my mother and father, in his case, only his father survived.

BH: Did your father have a lot of stress about where to go, or what would be next, or did he not talk about that with the children?

PL: Well, ne knew exactly what’s facing us. Listen, when you survive this kind of ordeal there’s nothing to hide.

BH: Yeah.

PL: You know what’s facing – to live in Israel or if you cannot go to Israel maybe go to America.

AP: Yeah.

BH: So it was just a wait.

PL: A waiting period. And uh, we were hoping maybe to go to Israel rather than go to the United States because in United States

RL: I remember crying. I didn’t want to go to the United States. I wanted to go to a kibbutz. (Laughing)

AP: You know it’s funny. I just wrote a book on mainly young people survivors between your age of 16 and 20 joining a kibbutz in this Youth Movement and what Zionism meant for them, because when you talk to survivors by and large the conclusion is after the Holocaust we had to go to Israel, you know.

RL/PL: Right.

AP: Even for people who didn’t end up going, they said okay well, it wasn’t for us, it was important that the Jewish people go to Israel. You know Zionism played this very important part.

RL: I have cousins whose children wanted to come to the United States. PL: They were born in Israel, now they want to come here.

RL: Yeah, and like his cousin, his mother was a survivor and she said my kids, there’s no more the pioneer spirit.

AP: Post-Zionism.

BH: I had a friend who went about fifteen years ago to Israel. She’s my age so her parents are now in their nineties but they were talking to his cousins, the father’s cousins, who were older, and he said for their generation it was one thing; for their children the difficult times, it was also difficult, but the grandchildren who are now in their twenties and thirties, it’s very hard to see. That third generation is still fighting, there’s still not peace.

PL: Israel became very materialistic.

BH: Oh, did it.

RL: I don’t know if we should have that conversation.

BH: That’s okay. We all know that.

AP: Socialist ideals disappear.

BH: It did. It was a change.

RL: Right.

AP: I’m teaching a class this semester on Israeli culture and society. Right now I’m still talking to them about the … and the creation of the state. But it’s hard for them to understand where Israel is today. You know, this generation doesn’t believe in the myths upon which the state was founded.

RL: Oh, yeah.

BH: I do.

AP: All this idealism is gone.

BH: I believe in all the myths.

RL: I do too, yeah, you know, but my cousin just called, Philips’ cousin in fact, and she knows “you know, it’s no more the chalutz (sp?)

BH: That’s the story about the kid who made the doll.

RL: What happened was, I used to teach the fourth grade, so you know I tried to tell them but nothing, I didn’t want to tell morbid stories really, so I told them this incident. When we came into the ghetto all I had with me was a doll. It was an old-fashioned doll, hard doll with material. Our house was right next to the barbed wire. And I was in the backyard playing with some kids. And a Polish girl got through the wires and she grabbed my doll and she ran out. And I knew that I couldn’t run after her. And I remember crying so hard. Even my sister remembers. And I was telling the kids, you know, I was in the ghetto and think about it. It was the only toy I had and there were no stores to go buy a new one.

So anyways, I thought they forgot about it. At the end of the school year a little girl comes over to me and says to me “Mrs. Lazowski, I made something for you.” She made the doll. She said “That’s the doll that was stolen from you in the ghetto”.

AP: This is completely unsolicited.

RL: Yes. You know I never even thought that she would remember, you know from Yom HaShoah until you know the end of school year but she did and I have the dolly if you want to see it.

AP/BH: That’s amazing.

PL: It’s not in the book, by the way.

RL: Okay.

BH: Good tell us. You came to New York, working and going to school.

AP: You were about eighteen?

RL: I was eighteen. And I worked from three o’clock at night ‘til four o’clock in the afternoon loading the trucks with frozen eggs to deliver to the bake shops. And I remember a story once. I used to put on tefillin every morning but by three o’clock it was still light. About six or seven, when the light went out, the driver used to go to have coffee but I went into the truck, put on tefillin and I davened

AP: Um, hmm.

PL: Then I came out. I hear he’s telling the rest of the drivers there that “I’ve got a kid there that’s workin’ with me, must be sick. All the time he’s testing something on his arm.

(Laughter)

AP: He had no idea. If you’ve never seen it before.

BH: What is this?

PL: And then I worked from four o’clock I went to high school, to Thomas Jefferson High School, to study English and learning. Then in two years I graduate high school at night and then I was accepted at Brooklyn College. Because my marks were so good, you needed a B average you didn’t have to pay. At that time. I don’t know now.

AP: Yeah.

PL: I didn’t have the money to pay anyway. And then, so I decided to go to Brooklyn at night and I went to Yeshiva University during the day.

AP: Mm, hmm.

BH: How did you have the strength to do all that and study as well?

PL: Well, you see, what happened was I had to pay money in the house. So during the summer I used to work as a waiter in the Pioneer Country Club.

AP: Oh, okay.

PL: And I used to make over a thousand dollars and then while in the Yeshiva University I was going ‘til one o’clock and from one o’clock I used to go to teach in the Hebrew School and soon as I finished Hebrew School I used to go take credits in college.

BH: Uh! You worked, you worked.

RL: You know, I want to tell you something. When you teach Hebrew School, where they come in the afternoon, they would like to do other things and they’d say “Oh, Mrs. Lazowski, I’m too tired, it’s too much”. I tell them “Look, I made up in two and a half years, I made up eight grades.

AP: Mm, hmm.

RL: I mean from, so don’t tell me about working hard. Okay. This here, I didn’t even know I had it, this is, she was from Israel, this is Schlaha (sp?) from Israel, and this is me, and this my sister, and this was when we were in Santa Maria di Leuca. In the summertime, it was like a camp. I don’t think it was overnight camps, I think was a day camp. So this picture, she is from Israel.

BH: This picture I would love to use.

AP: Which one?

BH: IS this a copy? We will scan everything. RL: It’s a copy of the original. Now this here is my sister and I in Italy.

BH: Oh, you’re so cute! I love your sister's smile.

RL: This original from the big one. This is one my father had. That’s us in Italy after the war, my mother and father, my sister and I, and a cousin who survived. This is the original of that picture. This is a picture of us in Austria. That’s also the school, these are the teachers. Okay, this, I have a lot more.

BH: These are just the ones we’re interested in.

RL: So, which ones do you want?

BH: Whatever you want

RL: You want this one?

BH: I want the one with the shlehah (sp?) Oh, your dad’s not in this one. We need the one with your father.

RL: Here’s my mother and father.

BH: And what was your father’s name?

RL: Morris Rabinowitz. And my mother’s name was Miriam, or Manya, they called her.

BH: R-a-b-i-n-o-w-i-t-z

AP: What was his

RL: Moshe. Meshke, they called him in Yiddish.

AP: Meshke.

RL: But I’m gonna get them back, right?

BH: Oh yes!

AP: Definitely.

BH: Absolutely.

RL: That’s my mother and father in Italy.

BH: Do you have any photos from that period?

RL: He has them, I have to look for them.

PL: She has plenty photos.

RL: I have so many, I have downstairs, I have about eighty albums.

BH: How many children do you have?

RL: We have three sons.

BH: So that must be a hundred albums right there.

RL: Three daughter-in-laws, and seven grandchildren.

BH: Are they all local?

RL: Yes.

BH: You’re lucky.

RL: Look at this. We’re putting that in the book.

BH: Are you writing another book?

RL: Yes. Once you write the first book you always write another book.

BH: What is the topic of this book?

PL: Understanding Judaism.

BH: In light of the Holocaust, or in general?

RL: In general. So what he wanted to do was for each holiday he’s gonna describe he wants to put in pictures of, this is our youngest son, really. This picture was in the Hartford, we used to have Hartford Times.

BH: Right, I remember the Hartford Times.

RL: Okay, that was in the Hartford Times. They came here and they took it but here, I didn’t know I had it.

BH: Have you addressed in your, you must have at some point, addressed the issue of God after the Holocaust and all that? I mean did you do that in writing or just thought about it?

PL: Not in writing. I’ve preached about it.