Oral History – Loreli Lewis (L. Loreli)
Interviewed by Carol Schulz July 29, 1980
CS: This is Carol Schulz and I’m interviewing Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Loreli Lewis and today is July 29th, 1980. Is today the 29th?
LL: Eh?
CS: Is today the 29th? The date.
LL: July 29th? Oh, today! Yeah, yeah, the 29th.
CS: Mrs. Lewis, first I want to ask you when you were born and where you were born.
LL: Well, I should give …names. I was born in 1897
CS: Oh, my!
LL: Fourth of July.
CS: Oh!
LL: In…Let me see, industrial part of Germany.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: I really don’t want this all in the (pause).
CS: Okay. Umm, where, with, uh, how many people were there in your family? Let’s start there.
LL: We were three children.
CS: Unh, hunh.
LL: Older sister five years older than I am, younger brother seven years younger than me.
CS: And what did your father do?
LL: He was a businessman.
CS: What kind of business?
LL: Well, he was a cattle dealer.
CS: What?
LL: Cattle dealer.
CS: Oh! Um, did you live in a set, in an area or neighborhood that was mostly Jews or was it everybody?
LL: You didn’t have that in Germany.
CS: Unh, hunh.
LL: We lived in a completely mixed neighborhood. You didn’t never have that in Germany. There were no restricted areas as we found it when we came here. And we always had mixed friends.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: I went to school with my Christian friends and Jewish friends. My father did, my grandfather had Christian friends. There was always a very good relationship.
CS: Mrs. Soumerai said her family had been in Germany for, I think she said, four hundred years. Do you know how long you were there?
LL: You know in former years you never traced your ancestry but I know, I know my great grandparents, I remember my parents speaking about them and probably it goes much further than that, you know. I’ve no idea how long.
CS: So generally, again, the feeling between Jews and non-Jews was they were friends?
LL: Of course, I tell you, you see I was brought up in a very liberal family.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: We … a kosher house, belonged to the Conservative Orthodox Reform. We belonged to the Conservative, there was only the Conservative or the Orthodox. Reform wasn’t there yet. We belonged to the Conservative, going there on the high holidays and sometimes on a Saturday, you know, but it all depends if you have this, shall I say, …duty…if you are very different from your neighbors mostly it comes through that.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: My father was such a typical Westphalian, you know. My mother was from the Rhineland.
CS: Unh, hunh.
LL: And so it was, as I said, it’s really very interesting, I went to private school before going to high school and I was very good friends with the girl, her father was director, a Gentile girl, her father was director of a glass company in Germany. And then the neighbors thought that there was only Jewish…These are the interesting things that you learn.
CS: Yeah.
LL: And later, during the Hitler campaign, I didn’t live in …anymore. I was married in Mannheim but I heard about it. Her mother was Jewish!.
CS: Oh, my.
LL: No one even knew. You know, there were many such cases.
CS: Do you think that people didn’t tell others because they were afraid of anti-Semitism, or just because they weren’t religious?
LL: I don’t know. I don’t think they even thought about it. Maybe, I don’t know if they… or if they came from a different city. We had cases like that in Mannheim during the Hitler time.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: Unbelievable, we couldn’t believe it that there were people who were, had Jewish ancestors, you know ( chuckling).
CS: Was your father, or even later when you and your husband got married, did you belong to clubs or organizations of non-Jews or Jews?
LL: No. That was the only thing that was separate. You belonged to a club, a Jewish club, and you know, where they had parties and
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: You know, and dances and things like that. In Dorf… I remember we had what was it“…” strictly Gentile club and there was one “…” …his daughter was in my class... He was known for his knowledge of …
CS: Hmm.
LL: And that’s a lot, you know.
CS: Yes!
LL: He was the only one. Now, I don’t know, maybe he became converted. I don’t know that.
CS: Um, hmm. But he was Jewish?
LL: Yeah (chuckling).
CS: Umm, hmm.
LL: That was all too … I don’t know if Jews even tried to get into that. That I couldn’t tell you but it was separate but living quarters, the houses, the apartments, all going to the hotel, you know, going to the resorts. There was never any of the stricture that you couldn’t go to hotel because you were Jewish.
CS: Hmm.
LL: Except for what they called Christian hospice. It was religious. it wasn’t a hotel., really, more like a boarding house. Bur otherwise there were no restrictions…My husband was the dentist and of course as a student, for instance. He belonged to a fraternity where in Germany, you know, you get this, I don’t know what you call it here, you fight
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: In the student fraternity. Not all of them but where he was, they did.
CS: Yeah.
LL: And he had a
CS: Scar?
LL: … And, uh,
CS: (Chuckling), yeah.
LL: And they couldn’t whatever …you call it. There were not…They were really arranged fightings, you know.
CS: Yeah.
LL: Fencing, or whatever it was. And the Christian fraternities, these very fancy ones, they didn’t fight with the Jews.
CS: Uh, hunh.
LL: But there were some fraternities mixed there. And my husband was, Christians could have been members if they would have wanted to, but you know most of the time they don’t even care.
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: But they had some that were for both,
CS: Um, hmm.
LL: But very, very rarely. Yeah, there you had more separation. Yeah, students. Academic, in the academic world, you had it more
CS: Um, hmm. In your town were there lots of Jewish professionals?
LL: Oh, yeah.
CS: Like…?
LL: They had. They had a lot of Jewish. This was true where I was born and
CS: And where you lived.
LL: Where I lived later in Mannheim. This is in the south of Germany.
CS: Uh, hunh.
LL: Near Heidelberg, if that means anything to you.
CS: Yeah...the town. Did you husband have non-Jewish patients, too?
LL: Oh yes, he had everyone. You know, there was no difference, yeah.
CS: Um, how, oh here, I have another question. Did anybody in your family serve in the army in World War I.?
LL: My husband worked as a dentist in the army. He was in, in the how you call it, dental hospital in Freiberg. He just had started his practice, you know, in 1911. He was thirteen years older than I was. That was, of course, before I knew him, and he was there in the, as a dentist from the army.
CS: Was your father, or was he too old?
LL: No, they were not, when my father, he
CS: He was too old.
LL: He was in the Russian War, you know.
CS: Yeah. Unh, hunh.
LL: My mother told me that her father served with the, with …, that’s a special Dutchman, but you know, Germany was in a war from 1870. Eighteen seventy was the last war between
CS: Um, hmm, right.
LL: Between Germany and France.
