My grandfather was born in Wurzburg 
in germany Your family that was born in Germany,
how many generations back do they go in Germany?
Oh, we can go back at least ten generations
I know myself I'm em, I'm the 8th that we
know of I'm the 8th generation, my son is
the ninth and my grandson is the tenth My
father served in the German army at that time
when he served he was.. Germany was divided
into various states and he served in the Bavarian
army During the first world war he even received
later on, the iron cross as a medal for valour
It was a very beautiful place to live in It
was the smallest city and the largest town
in Bavaria And I loved my childhood in Germany
We used to have all these wonderful parks
and forests around the area And the Main
river flowing through it Immaculately kept
And we all walked to school, we went to the
Jewish school And rain or snow, we were never
absent We had a very nice balabatish kind
of life so to speak With lots of support family
around us And the only seriously bad thing
that I remember is the fact my father had to be
away so much on business trips So mom raised
all of us But is was wonderful, I remember
it as a very wonderful wonderful life, but
that is of course before Hitler came to power
Tell me a little bit about your father, what
was his name Ludwig, everyone used to call
him Louie for short And what did he do? He was a butcher,
a butcher master as they call Because
in Germany, I'm sure it is today like that
But in order to open up any kind of a business
or trade You had to pass licenses to become
a master otherwise you could not open a store
And he inherited the business from his father
which was in our house where the business was
What specifically, you mentioned, he had
his own business? Yes, he specialized in veal,
beef and lamb We did not sell any pork meat
because most of our customers were Jewish
but they were not Er, how should I say Keeping
the tradition of not eating kosher meat Because
our meat was not kosher but it was considered
new kosher If you were a Polish Jew in Germany
you could never feel German because you were
constantly reminded that you were a Polish
Jew And that's how I grew up Feeling that
I was not part of the community I was discriminated
against by the German Jewish youngsters I
went to school with And of course I was discriminated
against by the German gentiles So I never
felt that I was German I was not permitted
to feel Were there other families from Poland
in the area? Yes, there was a small community
of um Polish emigres, Jewish emigres I don't know
off hand, I was too young to know how big
the Polish Jewish community was But it was
fairly small As a matter of fact they had
their own, small temple where we attended
Because again If you were a Polish Jew you
were really not welcome till much later when
Hitler came to power Then the lines became
a little bit more fuzzy But before that it
was fairly distinct where you lived in one
community and the German Jews obviously lived
in a different atmosphere When I was about
twelve years old I joined a Zionist youth
movement which was called Blue White or in
German, Blau Weiss It was to educate the children
for the Zionist movement And of course it
gave us a lot of changes too Because we would
go out on trips So, something like, to compare
it with the boy scouts or girl scouts in the
United States only it was strictly for Jewish
