Eva Lowen

[Beginning of recording is nearly inaudible, blurred by static. Harper opens by asking Lowen her name and date and place of birth, etc.]

LOWEN: My name is Eva Lowen. [Inaudible, blurred by static.] My father was a dentist by profession. He was born in Lvov, or Lemberg as it was called at that time, which is in Poland, although it was Russia and it also was Austria under the Austrian-Hungarian empire. It’s one of those cities that was controlled off and on by different nations. As a young man he came to Vienna, and his father also moved to Vienna. His father was also a dentist. My father went to dental school at the university in Vienna [University of Vienna]. My mother was born in a small town near Vienna, and the reason she was born in the small town is that it was during the summer vacation, when people went to this resort called Voslau [Bad Vöslau]. I noticed that there’s some Voslau water that’s being sold here now, which I thought was kind of funny, that they import water all the way from [laughs] — anyway, her father came from Riga, Latvia, but he also went to Vienna to practice his profession. He was an attorney. Both my grandmothers were also, of course, not born in Vienna, but came there with their husbands.

Harper: And you grew up with your grandparents as well?
LOWEN: My maternal grandparents, yes. My paternal grandparents, that was a different situation. My father’s father, who as I had mentioned was also a dentist, suffered from a stroke somewhere in the early years of my life. My grandmother, after this grandfather’s death, apparently went back to Krakow. My father had an unmarried brother who at one point also went back to Krakow. I’m not sure about these events; I have no good knowledge of when all of this happened or why it happened.

Harper: Were your grandparents religious?
LOWEN: Apparently at one time, yes, because my father was brought up with very religious schooling, but it dissipated at one point before I was even born. My maternal grandparents, also the same story, although my mother’s father became more religious after he came to the United States. He didn’t practice it very religiously, but he was more attuned to religious services. We think it was a result of his escape.

Harper: Did you have contact with your grandparents in Poland? Did you ever have contact or go there? Was there other family there in Poland?
LOWEN: No. There just was never that kind of an occasion. I was nine years old when I left. You mean after the war?

Harper: No.
LOWEN: All the family connections were in Vienna, except some of them moved away then.

Harper: Do you remember the street you lived on?
LOWEN: No, not really, but we did go back for a visit, my husband and I, in 1976, and we met with a distant cousin who took us to the cemetery, which was where I wanted to go and didn’t know my way about. I explored my roots, so to speak, and nothing was familiar except that it was talked about. My mother would mention where we lived and so forth. Physically, I don’t think I would have remembered it had I not had some of that information.

Harper: Can you describe your neighborhood at all? Did you live in an apartment or . . .?
LOWEN: Actually, I lived in more than one place. They were always apartments, flats; we did not have a house. I was born and brought to one apartment, and then my father took over his father’s practice, so that meant moving to this other apartment, which was in a very prominent area of Vienna. Then during my grandfather’s debilitating disease, his stroke, I lived with my maternal grandparents for a couple of years. I know I lived with them; I don’t know how long it was. I know where that was, too, but they were all apartments in big houses. I would not be able to find the school I went to; I don’t have any memory of that at all. I have very little recollection. Some people say that the older they get the more they remember about their childhood. I don’t.

Harper: Do you remember if you lived in a Jewish neighborhood?
LOWEN: No. It was not a Jewish neighborhood; it was not a Jewish district. My parents were definitely not that kind of Jewish people. They were more of the liberal-Reform type of attitude.

Harper: What was your native tongue?
LOWEN: Austrian and German. There was no Yiddish, nothing like that in my life at all.

Harper: Do you remember at all your religious upbringing?
LOWEN: Yes, I do remember some of it. I remember attending Orthodox services. It was not Reform. I remember women being separate from the men, and I also remember children being sent out of the synagogue during — I don’t even know the name of the service. The prayer for the dead, that portion. Children were not allowed to remain in the synagogue. I remember that. And I went to, which was the practice at the time — after school there were Jewish religious classes available. I don’t know whether we went away from school to some other place or not, but there was no such thing as Sunday school. It was after normal school. That’s about it.

Harper: There was no observance in your home?
LOWEN: Very little. I don’t remember any particular holiday services. There probably were, but I don’t remember them.

Harper: Do you know if your family, and you included, associated with Jews or non-Jews? Or was it a mix?
LOWEN: My family, yes. Definitely most of their friends were Jewish. But they were not, as far as I know, religiously practicing. They were sort of the intellectuals who didn’t deal very much with mysticism and whatever you want to refer to as religious practice.

Harper: So your father, you said, was a dentist?
LOWEN: Yes.

Harper: How about your mother?
LOWEN: She was just a mother. A cooking, baking mother [laughs]. She didn’t even bake cookies then because you had household help.

Harper: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
LOWEN: No, I’m an only child, as were many of us of that generation.

Harper: Would you say your family was middle class, upper middle class?
LOWEN: I’d say they were upper middle class, professionals on both sides.

Harper: Were they involved in any sort of political activities, any groups or social activities?
LOWEN: No, no politicians.

Harper: Or not so much politics, but any groups or clubs or organizations?
LOWEN: I had an uncle on my mother’s side, a cousin actually, who was a very strong Zionist, but I wasn’t affected by that at all, nor were they. They did not enter into anything like that, not to my knowledge.

Harper: Can you tell me about your schooling, what sort of school you went to?
LOWEN: I went to a public school.

Harper: You said your only religious education was after?
LOWEN: Right. I think all children were excused; that was the system. All children were excused to a religious school class. Whether that was one day a week or three days a week, I don’t remember. Maybe other people who went through the same thing would know, but I have no way of finding out or haven’t made an effort to do that.

Harper: I want to start asking you about when things began changing, but before I do that, is there anything about your childhood that you want to include? Vacations, anything about your life in Vienna that you remember?
LOWEN: That would be relevant to . . .?

Harper: Everything is relevant. Any sort of memories that you have of Vienna.
LOWEN: I know it was not an unhappy childhood, and I remember even the year or whatever it was that I lived with my grandparents. I don’t remember feeling that I was abandoned in any way, so when you read about what goes on in our society now — I have no particular feelings that would be unfavorable to my family’s and my relationship.

I don’t remember having a lot of close friends, and I think some of that probably has to do with the way most of us lived. You lived in an apartment building, and you didn’t have the kind of relationship with other families where the children would come over and play like my children did when they grew up. I think it was a more isolated life. Now that may be only true of the way I lived; I did not live in what’s known as a Jewish district. I know I had schoolmates, but I don’t remember ever having any social contact with them.

I did have social contacts with my mother’s friends’ children, and that was, of course, always arranged. You’d get together and you went for a walk someplace, or you went to somebody’s house with either your mother or most of us also had what’s now called a nanny, and they would then take you to a birthday party or whatnot. I went ice skating, I learned how to skate, and I used to go skating. I went by myself. That was part of my physical exercise. I didn’t learn how to play the piano, and I didn’t go to ballet, any of that. That was what I did.

Harper: Do you remember how things began to change with your situation?
LOWEN: In 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, I remember the parade down the street and Austrians being very excited about it. We had a front row seat because my parent’s apartment was on a big boulevard, and I’m sure some of that happened right in front of our apartment. My paternal grandparents were no longer in Vienna at that time. I guess at the time of Kristallnacht, many Jewish men were briefly, as it turned out, arrested and brought to some kind of a detention center in Vienna. My father was let go. Why, I don’t know. I don’t know why they were arrested nor why they were let go. But that’s, of course, when things became obvious that we had to get out of there. At some point after Kristallnacht, I believe it was, my maternal grandfather — this may have happened in ’39; this happened after we left, I think — was incarcerated in Buchenwald in Dachau, and he eventually also got out. But maybe I’m getting ahead of things.

Harper: Before the Anschluss [“joining,” the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany], do you remember ever hearing of Hitler, or your parents talking about Hitler?
LOWEN: Not before. But there’s something I do remember. I guess Austria had a sort of socialist regime under Dorfuss, and I do remember before Hitler, somewhere in maybe ’33, ’34, there was some kind of aggression. There was some air activity, I think, some kind of a minor revolution. That’s more or less all that I remember. That was between the Socialists and the Communists probably.

Harper: And you don’t remember your parents ever mentioning anything?
LOWEN: No. It really comes down to that my parents were very protective, and I know that even after we lived here in Portland — we emigrated eventually to Portland — there was very little emphasis placed on my becoming aware of what was going on in world politics. It was a really kind of sheltering — you’re not supposed to be reading newspapers and listening to political news until you were of a certain age, maybe like high school, but anything before that, this was not anything relevant to your childhood. You were not encouraged to be aware of what was going on.

Harper: Do you remember attitudes changing at school?
LOWEN: Yes. I don’t remember anything personal, but I do remember that the Jewish children were not allowed to go to their former schools, that they were supposed to go to a different school which was set up just for the Jewish children. This was after Anschluss. Another thing is that I had a nanny, and she was also no longer allowed to work for my family. But somewhere along the line there were others that came in and were allowed to work, so I’m not sure why and how that took place.

Harper: I want to find out a little bit more information about before the Anschluss, then the actual Anschluss, and then more in detail about how things changed on an everyday basis. Did you notice anything at school leading up to this? Was there any sort of antisemitic activity that you saw in the street, any graffiti, any . . .?
LOWEN: As I said, in 1938 I was nine years old, and I went to school and I went home. If there was, I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time, maybe because I didn’t live in that kind of a district. Maybe the Jewish children that grew up in the second bezirk, the second district, which was a predominantly Jewish district. Now there may have been a lot more of that there for them to observe.

Harper: Can you tell me more about seeing this parade?
LOWEN: It was the entry of the German army. Everybody was out there cheering them on.

Harper: Do you remember anything that your parents might have said? Were they frightened?
LOWEN: No, not at that time. I’m sure they were. Of course they knew what was happening, but they did not share, did not give me that — I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t have any feelings of fear at that time, not until later.

Harper: Can you tell me how life changed for you on a daily basis after the Anschluss?
LOWEN: It changed for me in these two respects, as I mentioned earlier: we were without the nursemaid, and I went to a Jewish school for a while. And of course, I didn’t remain in Vienna very long. In December 1938 we left, and the Anschluss was in March, so I wasn’t there that long. The changes probably were very gradual, and people who stayed there after December ’38 had a much more difficult time of it.

Harper: Do you remember Kristallnacht?
LOWEN: No, not really. I don’t remember anything happening except for the fact that my father disappeared for a day, and at that time there was a great deal of commotion, and my mother took me and herself to stay with some other people. There was a lot going on. I really can’t give you a detailed account, except that I knew that something was wrong and something was going on at the time.

Harper: Did your parents share with you at all the decision to leave?
LOWEN: No. That just wasn’t done. You don’t share these things with your minor children; they just do whatever you feel is right. And I was quite young. I think I would’ve even done the same thing in present circumstances if we had to leave. And we did, actually. We moved from Portland to California, and my children weren’t consulted. It was necessary for us to do this.

Harper: Tell me about leaving, who left with you, where you went.
LOWEN: At that time already it was difficult to get a visa into the United States; there were already quotas. My father did have relatives living in New York, so they would’ve vouched for him, but the quota was one of the problems. My mother had a cousin who lived in Brussels, married to a concert pianist, and they were able to get us a visa that would allow us to go to Belgium for an interim until we would be able to get our American visa. And that’s what we did. They packed up our belongings. My father’s practice and the apartment, I guess, was just turned over to an Austrian Nazi. Our personal possessions were put in crates and placed in a warehouse in Antwerp, where they were to remain until such a time as we would then be able to leave Belgium and go to the United States. So we got on a train, and the next thing I knew we were crossing a border and had to provide papers, and then the next thing I knew we were in Brussels.

Harper: Who was with you?
LOWEN: My mother and my father.

Harper: What about your grandparents?
LOWEN: They remained behind. My maternal grandparents, and my mother’s sister, my aunt and two children, husband, they at that point were still in Vienna.

Harper: And did they leave?
LOWEN: Eventually, yes.

Harper: Where did they go?
LOWEN: Do you want this now or later? My maternal grandfather was the one who I said was at one time, and I don’t have the exact date, arrested and was in Dachau and Buchenwald. My maternal grandmother, during his incarceration, did die of natural causes. She was diabetic, and she apparently had pneumonia. So my maternal grandfather was released and came back to Vienna, and then sometime in 1939 he emigrated. He had brothers in Chicago — they all left when they were young — and so he eventually was able to emigrate and went through Russia by train, of course, to the port of Vladivostok, and then eventually to the West Coast and then to Chicago. So he was able to leave without any serious problems after he got all of these permits.

My mother’s sister and husband and two children met a different fate. The youngest of the two daughters was able to leave by one of the children’s transports to Israel because she was under a certain age. I think 16 was the determining age, so they sent her. Her uncle — he was the Zionist — was already living in Israel at that time, so he was able to help. She went to live on a kibbutz and all that, but he was a facilitator. My mother’s sister’s husband and older daughter found the only way they could get out was to be on a ship, a Danube transport, which was supposed to eventually also take them to Palestine. I guess that winter was particularly viciously cold, and the Danube froze in Yugoslavia. The ship couldn’t proceed, the Germans caught up with them, and they were killed.

Harper: Do you know where or how?
LOWEN: That’s the name of that little town that I need to look up for you. It’s way back in my mind somewhere, and I can’t think of it right now. I’m not sure I have any name for it at home, but it should come to me eventually, the name of the town where the ship was stopped. But we don’t know any of the details. The only thing is that, thank goodness — I guess you might say — for excellent German record keeping, a lot of this information eventually got to the people who were looking for people.

Harper: Do you think that the ship was just stopped and they were executed there?
LOWEN: I doubt it. I don’t know. There might be stories about that somewhere, but I’m not familiar with them. There might be some documentation.

Harper: Did you have any other family that was left behind?
LOWEN: That was left behind . . .

Harper: Or died, rather?
LOWEN: Yes and no. They were more distant cousins of my mother’s, not in Vienna, but many of them perished because they eventually found themselves in France, and there’s that other story about the French rounding up the Jews and turning them over to the Germans.

Harper: So you were back in Belgium?
LOWEN: Yes, we went to Belgium, where my aunt, my mother’s cousin, and her husband lived in a pension, which is like a boardinghouse, a very elegant one, but nevertheless a huge, big house. Many other refugee families found that a place where they would be able to stay and live until the time when they could leave and go on. I went to school there, in Brussels.

Harper: What kind of schools?
LOWEN: Public schools, always.

Harper: Was the language a problem?
LOWEN: That’s interesting. I’m glad you brought that up because I had sort of forgotten about that. Belgians speak French and Flemish, and Flemish is not too distantly related to German. If you speak German and the children speak Flemish, you can learn each other’s language eventually. And of course French then. Because you go to school, you learn French. But communication was not impossible because of this linguistic connection.

Harper: So what were your parents doing at this time?
LOWEN: They were not able to do much of anything because my father was not permitted to do anything. But I guess if you know the right people, and my uncle somehow got a connection. There was a dentist who was allowing my father to share an office with him, and so my father worked some of the time, even though I’m sure it wasn’t legal.

Harper: Did you have plans to move on from Belgium, or were you . . .?
LOWEN: Yes. We were under a quota, and we were hoping that eventually we’d be next in line, which is what happened. We got visas eventually.

Harper: While you were in Belgium, did you receive any news about what was going on in occupied . . . ?
LOWEN: I’m sure they did. News did reach, and my other grandparents, my other grandmother and my uncle who were in Krakow — I don’t think I have any correspondence between them in Europe; I only have some of that afterwards. Before the United States entered the war, you see, one could still communicate with other countries by mail, even under German occupation.

Harper: How long were you in Brussels?
LOWEN: Sometime in early 1940, the visa finally came through. I would guess it must have been April. Passage on a ship to leave Antwerp was arranged for June of that summer, 1940, and Hitler invaded the lowlands in May of 1940. So my uncle and his wife and another cousin and we all packed a small nothing — suitcase, I guess — and fled Brussels.

Harper: The war had broken out by this time. Were you aware?
LOWEN: The European, 1939.

Harper: Did the atmosphere change?
LOWEN: In Brussels?

Harper: Yes.
LOWEN: The only thing I was aware of is that — where I lived, it was not in the densely populated city. There were houses; this was not the dense apartment kind of situation. Not too far from where I was residing at the time was an enormous green space, a huge park, and I remember tanks, maneuvers, in that park. That was somehow connected, of course, with what was going on. But again, to me, this was totally meaningless. Tanks are a frightening thing, no matter what.

Harper: Then right before you left, did you notice any concern on the part of your parents. Were they afraid?
LOWEN: Of course. Nobody knew what was going on; nobody knew where to go.

Harper: Did they share anything with you at all, or did you overhear them talking?
LOWEN: I’m sure I did, but I don’t remember it. The whole next few months were a totally frightening experience. First of all, we were in a taxi, and this taxi was driving us away from Brussels towards France. And then in a town called Ypres [spells out], which was the site of a World War I battle — which was pointed out to me at that time — we were stopped, and my mother, my father, and I found ourselves in some kind of a — I vaguely recollect this, but I can’t explain what it was like. It was not a house; it was a huge space where maybe animals were kept. There were no doors. We were placed in that facility overnight.

Harper: You were detained there?
LOWEN: Yes.

Harper: By . . .?
LOWEN: The Belgians. And then the next day, again, we were on our way. My father apparently made arrangements to get on a Belgian train headed for France, and then in a city called Tournai [spells out] the train was stopped, and we were removed from the train and placed in a real jail this time, in the city jail. My mother and I in one part of the jail and my father in another part of the jail, separated. I remember that night being a very frightening night because the Germans were bombing and we were in a jail. We couldn’t go anywhere. The jail was adjacent to a railroad yard, and the Germans were bombing the railroad yard.

So that was the beginning of very frightening times in my life. That was the first experience. And then again, we were allowed to leave, but at that point my father had disappeared, and my mother and I were left to fend for ourselves. I don’t remember how or why, but she must have been wandering around in Tournai, and again there was some kind of a roundup. We were put on a Belgian train headed for France, and this time we were placed in cattle cars on that train, and we were no longer able to get off the train.

Harper: And you were with your mother?
LOWEN: I was with my mother, but we had no idea where my father was at that point. That train eventually led to Gurs, which was the French detention camp in the Pyrenees near a city called Pau [spells out]. It was created by the French in about 1936 or ’37 for the Spanish loyalists who were fleeing Spain into France. They were incarcerated there; they were in detention there, the Spanish soldiers. Consequently, it seemed an obvious place to house these refugees because they had no other facilities in France at that time yet. They brought us amongst many others to Gurs.

Harper: Were you en route to leaving? Had you had your passage already . . .?
LOWEN: That’s right. We had booked passage, and we were supposed to leave in late May. I don’t remember the exact date, but I know the passage and all the arrangements were made for us to leave Brussels in late May or early June. And that’s when Hitler bombed and invaded the lowlands, so we couldn’t remain. May 10th is when this all took place, when Hitler invaded Belgium and Holland.

Harper: So is this trip that you originally set out on when you were in the taxi, and when you were first detained, was that some kind of preparation . . .?
LOWEN: It was to escape. Fleeing the advancing Germans.

Harper: So you just sort of packed up stuff and took off?
LOWEN: Right. It was practically nothing, just left with a minimum of possessions.

Harper: Did you realize that you were escaping? Were you afraid?
LOWEN: Yes. That became quite obvious. Let me say this, I didn’t realize I was escaping as a Jew, but we were escaping as people who were escaping Hitler and Germans. At this point, I’m not sure I knew what role my religion had to do with this, but we were escaping a bad regime. So anyway, we were on a train headed for we don’t know where. And of course, let me say this, unlike the trains later on that went to Auschwitz, this must have been heaven. They were not great conditions, but they were not those terrible demeaning conditions, and they must have given us food, and they did allow us to at least get off the train periodically to relieve yourself.

Harper: Were they soldiers? French soldiers?
LOWEN: At first Belgians soldiers, and then French soldiers. They changed at the border. I’m sure they had a gun in their lap. The point is that they were doing a job, but they were not vicious or anything like that. They were just like a policeman. They were just supposed to keep people from leaving.

Harper: I’m sure you didn’t realize this at the time, but maybe now you can answer this question, do you know if these people on this train were Jewish? Or were they just refugees, or . . .?
LOWEN: They were not Belgian refugees. They were not Catholics or Protestants. They were all Jewish refugees, that I know. I think any Belgians who might have done the same thing were not arrested. If Belgian citizens wanted to escape to France, they were not arrested and then put in detention camps. They were definitely all Jewish, or maybe political. Eventually that came out. Strangely enough, there were other people my mother knew, also on that same train, who had come from Brussels, but not along with us. They just happened to be there at the same time.

So there we were in Gurs, my mother and I, and we did have our papers, and at that point we did not know where my father was. But as was done I’m sure everywhere else, lists of detained people went from one detention camp to another detention camp, and I think the Red Cross probably arranged for that. That’s how my mother found out where my father was. He was also detained in a camp in the Mediterranean near Perpignan, and then a correspondence could begin. He could write to us and we could write to him.

Harper: Do you know what camp he was in?
LOWEN: Yes. St. Cyprien [spells out]. This must have been mid-May of 1940. My recollection of what it was like in Gurs is that it was uncomfortable. It was very hot. We were put up in barracks in bunks with minimal bedding, very minimal food. The sanitary facilities I’m sure were not the greatest. All the women were in one area in these barracks. The Spanish detainees did all of the dirty work; they came and collected the garbage and all of that stuff. There was a presence of these men, and the only reason I’m bringing this up is that my mother was at that time a smoker and was desperate for cigarettes. They had access to cigarettes, so she would trade them some food that we had in order to get some cigarettes. It was kind of a barter going on between the Spaniards.

There were Gypsies in the camp. I remember that vividly because they seemed to be utterly fascinated by my mouth full of gold. My father was a dentist, and even as a child when I had cavities in the teeth that I would eventually lose, I still would have gold fillings. So I remember the Gypsies being interested in my gold [laughs]. What else do I remember about that experience? I don’t remember being particularly frightened. There was really no cause to be particularly frightened. There were no soldiers doing any terrible things to the people. In other words, there was no physical contact at all. There was just a languishing, a waiting for, hopefully, to get out of there.

Harper: So what did you do during the day?
LOWEN: I really don’t know. Just hung around. There are several books now about Gurs because of what happened later on. Geographically speaking, it was an awful place, very muddy, very hot, dry. Foot of the Pyrenees, not a very friendly landscape. Whether we played in the mud or whatever, I don’t know.

Harper: Did you have to wear uniforms or anything?
LOWEN: No. We probably just had the clothes on our back. I don’t remember whether we even had a change of clothes because we came with very little. I had my teddy bear. I still have him. I think my mother had some kind of a blanket that she dragged along, but whether we had more than one change of clothing, I don’t remember. However, there were some other family members living in France already, in Clermont-Ferrand, who were contacted by my mother, and they apparently were able to get packages with clothing to Gurs. That’s what happened. At one point later on, we had some additional clothing.

OK. In about mid-July, because we had visas to enter the United States and my father connected with some officials, he was released from his camp, St. Cyprien, and he came to Gurs by the train and got our release, so we were able to leave. We were free.

Harper: This was 1940.
LOWEN: This was in about July of 1940. I think altogether we were six weeks in Gurs. He must have had some money. I don’t know how he managed to pay for trains and so forth. Of course he must have had money; he had money with him when we left Brussels, so he had some money left, and we got on the train and went to Marseille, which is the port on the Mediterranean. There we found out visas are only good for a certain length of time, and in the meantime these visas expired. So daily trips to the American Consulate, etc., etc. This went on for several weeks.

Harper: Where did you stay?
LOWEN: In a small hole in the wall, a room; it wasn’t an apartment. There was a large refugee community in Marseille, all waiting to get out of there. They weren’t there to stay. There was networking. People told each other about what’s going on. Even after we received this renewal of this visa, a new problem arose that the French wouldn’t let people out of France. You had to have an exit visa. God only knows why they didn’t want to let you leave. They used what I’m sure was not a very legitimate excuse, that if there were men of military age — which my father wasn’t anymore — and they would let them out, then they would fight against them when they joined the service wherever. My father was already 45 years old. I guess one could consider that such a person, a 45-year-old male, could serve in the military.

But whatever, that was the excuse, and you can’t get an exit visa, so how do you leave the country? Well, you leave it illegitimately. There was already then a pipeline over the Pyrenees into Spain, where if you knew the right way to get there —even getting on a train was hazardous because frequently an official would come through the trains and ask for papers, including exit visas. If you got on the train in Marseille and took this train to the border with Spain, you incurred the risk that you might be arrested for not having the proper papers, but they took that risk. The other thing I remember is one of the things my parents were told to do. There was food rationing at the time already, and sugar and butter were two of the very scarce items, and to take along some sugar if you need to bribe somebody. Try using this as a bribe. I remember not having to use that because there was never anybody who came and questioned our presence on the train.

Anyway, then you were supposed to get off the train just this side of the Spanish border. You can’t go across because you don’t have the right papers to leave the country, so you can’t stay on the train. We got off the train in Cerbera [spells out], which is a small town on the French side. My father had already found out in Marseille that what you do after you get off the train in Cerbera is you get in touch with a man at the railroad station, apparently some official who is going to help tell you what to do about leaving France.

And yes, that’s exactly what happened. We were all there together, and I remember this man — I couldn’t describe him — telling my father, standing out in the open. You have to visualize that this is a town right at the border. The Pyrenees separate France and Spain, but it was at the Mediterranean end, so the mountains at that point are fairly shallow. It’s not like you’re climbing 5,000 or 6,000 feet. Anyway, this man at the train station was describing how you walk across to leave, to escape. He said, “You don’t do it at night. You don’t try to escape at night. You escape in broad daylight. You walk up this mountain” — or this low range between vineyards — “and when you get near the frontier station, which is at the peak, you pass that frontier station at a specific time of the day. You pass it at noon because the soldiers, the frontier police, are inside having their lunch.”

I think it was all planned. In other words, they could be inside and be oblivious to what was going on outside. I think the soldiers knew what was going on — I’m not sure, but I think so — that there would be people escaping. Anyway, the idea is to walk across the Pyrenees and pass the frontier guards, and get across and go down on the side of Spain where there were — the Spaniards at that time did not attempt to prevent the refugees from going through their country. You couldn’t stay there; the destination was Portugal. Then from there on ships would take you across to the United States.

Spain was the go-between country, the facilitator. That’s exactly what we did, and that was also, of course, a very frightening experience because you don’t know. Somebody might not let you walk across; they might stop you. But it went well. We crossed, and we arrived in Spain and went to the local police station, where we got the information about where the train went, when the train went. We went by train then from Portbou, which was the Spanish town, to first Barcelona, then Madrid, and then eventually to Lisbon in Portugal, where things had to start all over again. More visa renewals. And that was three months later, three months in Portugal when we finally got on a ship and left legally.

Harper: Do you want to take a break now? Let’s take a quick break. I’d like to get more details about your escape and your time in Portugal when we come back.

[After the break, the recording again contains background static, making it difficult to hear. The original transcriber attributed the following questions to John G., introduced at the beginning of the recording as an observer. However, it is likely that some were posed by Harper. The voice sounds more like his. In cases where the identity of the interviewer is uncertain, it has been noted as “male voice.”]

Harper: If we could hear more about Spain. Do you remember . . .?
LOWEN: Yes, from there on I have pretty solid memories. I remember the fear, and the discomfort too. As I think I mentioned, it was pretty hot in that part of the country and very barren. It was not a very lush part of the country. We took this little path in between rows of these vineyards that were growing up the hillsides like vineyards here too. It’s pretty rocky land. Clutching my teddy bear. I know we had nothing. We didn’t have a suitcase. There’s just no way you could take anything, and we didn’t have that much. Probably didn’t even have a change of clothing at that point. But fortunately, as I said, we had papers to get us out of Europe, and because my father did have family in New York, they would send money after we got to Lisbon. Wire money. It was the circumstance at the time.

Male voice: [inaudible]
LOWEN: You had to. I guess in those days that was a pretty long trip. I know we spent one night in Barcelona and then another night in Madrid. Later on, my mother told me this, that when we were in Madrid the one night — they had already known of the Prado being a famous art museum, and as long as we were in Madrid, let’s take the opportunity and view this wonderful collection. The way my mother tells me, when we were all on the street facing the museum, ready to enter it, she saw one of those big official automobiles flying both the Spanish and the German flags and said, “I’m not going to go in there.” In other words, some German official was there also coming to see the collection, so we left.

And then from Madrid all the way to Lisbon. There again, all of these courts where there were [courts of exit?], large refugee groups hanging in there waiting to get out. They would sit around coffee shops and houses and talk. There was nothing else to do. But that was always a source of information, like I said earlier, kind of a networking organization, find out what was going on. And the daily trips to the consulate. There’s an opera that Menotti wrote called The Consul, and what the opera refers to is this particular period in history when refugees were attempting to get the proper papers to leave Nazi Europe and enter the United States. It’s that scene he’s describing in the opera.

Male voice: So did you rent an apartment?
LOWEN: A room, yes.

Male voice: [inaudible]
LOWEN: Oh, that was kind of fun. There were other refugee families, and there were young children like myself, and we would get together and we were — Lisbon’s a very nice, not too big city, and we would get on public street cars and wander, just the children, wander around and be outdoors. It was the time of the year that the weather was nice and pleasant. I don’t remember that as being an awful time. I wasn’t in school, and I guess that was all right too. We would play outdoors [inaudible]. Like a tourist, we’d investigate. There was a zoo, and the zoo had some — in fact, I went back to that zoo many years later, and they still had the little playhouse, a house for children to play house in. I remember doing that.

In 1971, I think, we went back for the first time to Lisbon, and I made it a point to go to that zoo to see the famous panther. There was a beautiful black panther. Portuguese and Spaniards are known for their tile work. This black panther was in a cage, and the backdrop for this panther was this beautiful blue tile work. I went back to see if it was still there, and it was. I don’t know if the panther was still there. Some of these things had deteriorated, but nevertheless, there were still remnants of some of my memories. I remember the second time I was in Lisbon, my husband and I had a more leisurely time, and we wandered up and down the street where I had spent those three months, and the movie theatre that I had attended one or twice was still there. That part of my childhood, I have much more visual recollection of. Then we finally got everything together. We got on a ship and left in December 1940 and arrived in New York, I think, on December 5th. Actually it arrived at Hoboken. I guess we were met by some member of the family.

Male voice: Where did you stay?
LOWEN: At first in a hotel room in New York. It was December, and I had no clothes. I couldn’t leave the hotel because I had no warm clothes. I’m sure my parents didn’t either, but I’m sure friends and relatives gave them a coat to wear, and then they had to go out and find me a coat to wear so I could get out. Anyway, my father being a dentist, he opened a practice, and there were already sorts of restrictions on the medical profession. In order to pass the boards, you had to go back to get more school even though you were already a practicing dentist or a doctor in Europe. Those were the requirements. So my father had to find out where he would eventually be able to settle and practice his profession again.

Male voice: How long did you stay in New York?
LOWEN: Nine months. We arrived in December of 1940, and we left for Portland then in September 1941.

Male voice: Did you go to school?
LOWEN: I went to school. We lived on 69th Street.

Male voice: How was your English?
LOWEN: Like now there is bilingual education, there was a special class, and I didn’t like it. I just wanted to be integrated in the regular class and that’s what happened. I didn’t like that special class. My mother must have gone and talked to the principal, and I went to a regular school and learned English.

Male voice: Did your parents speak English?
LOWEN: Yes. They both spoke English quite well. They learned it long before [inaudible].

Male voice: [inaudible]
LOWEN: So my father found out after a long investigation, first of all, that the requirement for going back and being retrained, so to speak, was the least in Oregon and Washington, two years. Also in Michigan and in Texas. Those were the three options. After talking to various people who knew the country better, they all said, “I think you would prefer to live on the West Coast.” At that time the dental school was in Portland and served both Washington and Oregon [inaudible] stayed in Portland instead of going on to Washington, Seattle, or wherever. So that’s how we came to this wonderful place.

Male voice: When the United States entered the war, you must have been 11 or 12.
LOWEN: 12, yes.

Male voice: Do you remember, were you a resident alien or [inaudible]?
LOWEN: We were luckier than the Germans. The Germans had curfews and were not allowed the privileges of driving beyond a certain limit, but the Austrians were not included in that, which was kind of interesting. Didn’t have to be in your residence at 9:00 PM or whatever time curfew was. I do remember my parent’s social life, that they would go visit their German friends because they couldn’t go home later. They didn’t have to be home at a certain hour, so they were out more than they were in their apartment.

Before that though, in New York— most women, unless they were professional women like women doctors, most women were just housewives. My mother did not know how to do anything to earn a living, except that when they knew that we would leave Vienna — we lived in this apartment. On the street level of that building was a florist, flower arranging, a very famous florist. My mother thought it might be prudent to acquire some skill, and so she volunteered if they would teach her how to do this kind of work. She wouldn’t ask to be paid for it; she just wanted to learn the florist business. And she did that.

So when we arrived in New York, my father couldn’t earn a living and we were living off the money that his family gave us. My mother decided she needed to find some way of making money, and some relative or some friend put her in touch with some people who made artificial flowers, which were quite marketable in those days. People would wear these funny little suits with artificial flower corsages, or on their hats. It’s a very skillful occupation, and you need somewhat of an artistic interest, so since flowers were always something she was interested in, she learned how to make flowers out of fabric and she worked for these people for a while. She did the work in the apartment, sort of like piece work.

Then when we came to Portland, she did the same thing, trying to sell it. Of course, there was no money in it, so she went to work for a local florist down in the old farmer’s market, which was down on Yamhill. There was also one on Front Street. She worked for the florist for a while and then later on went to work at the dental school, of all things. With her job there, doing the wax modeling of fillings, she helped support the family because my father was not making any money at that time.

Male voice: What was it like going to school with your background, being in an American school during the war? I’m sure you started to hear what was going [inaudible]. Being around these people that didn’t [inaudible].
LOWEN: I don’t remember any impact there, as far as sharing any of this with my schoolmates particularly. All I remember is I went to high school here, and that was on the West Coast when the Japanese were being interned. That, of course, made the Jewish refugees feel this is not right, this is not fair, knowing what we went through. But as far as I and my fellow students in grammar school and high school, the European experience never entered into anything.

Male voice: Surely you knew what was going on? What was your reaction?
LOWEN: Oh, yes. That’s what I tried to bring out earlier. My family did not discuss world problems with a child; they’d discuss it with their friends but not with their children — or I was an only child. We listened to the news every night, and I’m sure my father made all sorts of comments about what was going on. I was there, so I overheard his comments, but it didn’t involve me. He talked to his wife or to his friends. I was sort of like the silent bystander.

Male voice: After high school — you graduated high school?
LOWEN: Yes. Then I went to Reed for three years, and I did not graduate. I didn’t quite cut it. I didn’t finish college ever. I got married soon after.

Male voice: Can you tell me about your husband?
LOWEN: He’s also a refugee, but his father was smart. He left early. My husband was born in Germany, Gorlitz, which is a smaller city on the Polish border in Silejia. In 1933 his father already became very much aware of the fact that they were going to eventually have to leave. In 1936 they left and arrived in 1937 in Portland. That’s another story. My father-in-law had good property in Gorlitz and traded property with a man from Portland who wanted to go back to Germany. That’s how he came to Portland. They exchanged houses and other business properties. So he brought his family in 1936, ’37 and escaped all the other horrors, although other relatives weren’t quite as fortunate.

Male voice: Was your family, or were you involved in the Jewish community here?
LOWEN: Not very much, no. My father felt very alienated by the Jewish community in Portland. Not the refugee community, of course, but the Portland Jewish community, he felt alienated from it. He had no strong religious feelings or beliefs and consequently made a brief attempt at belonging to the Jewish community but felt somewhat rejected because he was not warmly welcomed.

Male voice: So where did you meet your husband?
LOWEN: At the Friendship Club, which was this organization you mentioned earlier. Actually, his sister and I were already friends, but my husband was first of all in the service and secondly at Oregon State University, and I really didn’t meet him at the time his sister and I were roommates. But we did meet at some performance or whatever at the Friendship Club.

Male voice: Do you have children?
LOWEN Three, two in California and one here. We lived in California for 20 years. We left Portland and we came back.

Male voice: Where did you live in California?
LOWEN: Stockton and San Jose.

Male voice: Were you involved in any refugee or Jewish activity?
LOWEN: No refugee activity. This was — no more refugees [inaudible word].

Male voice: Did you work, or . . .?
LOWEN: I worked for a few years after my youngest child was in junior high. I worked for the State of California in the unemployment insurance division as a processor of claims. It was an intermittent job, not full time, which was what I wanted. I didn’t want to work full time.

Male voice: [inaudible]
LOWEN: He was by profession, by college degree, in food technology. He worked for food processing companies here in Portland and in California, canning fruit and vegetables, the production end of the business. The one in Stockton where he worked for 17 years, he left voluntarily because of managerial problems and went to work for a company in San Jose, which unfortunately was not able to survive a lot of takeovers. So he eventually found himself without a company to work for, and because we still had not only good friends, but two mothers at that time still living in Portland, we decided to come back here. Our children, we didn’t know where they would end up. There wasn’t that certainty that they would stay in California, so we didn’t find it difficult to come back and resume our life here.

Male voice: Did you raise your children with a Jewish identity?
LOWEN: Yes. They all three went to Sunday school. I had a son who was bar mitzvahed. They’re not religious, but they know who they are. They don’t practice religion. Oddly enough, my youngest child, who was the most free thinking of them all, married a non-Jewish man and is raising my granddaughter, her only child, Jewishly. She goes to Sunday school. It’s not profound, not that observant. They observe the High Holidays. They go to Passover and the important holidays, but it’s not a Jewish household in the strict sense.

Male voice: When did you tell your children about your experiences?
LOWEN: I think mostly when they were in high school. Through Sunday school, and in public school, they were aware of Holocaust. They had a very good history teacher in high school who was Jewish, and he presented his classes with that period in history, made them aware of it. And I talked about it. My experience was not so devastating that I didn’t want to talk about it. I had no problem at all with that.

Male voice: Do you have a message for people who may be watching this tape in the future?
LOWEN: The most important message is, of course, that this should never happen again. But I’m afraid it’s happening. Not just with Jews, but it’s happening in so many other countries, Rwanda and Bosnia. There’s so much hate in the world; it will never change. In that regard, I’m very pessimistic. I don’t think there’s hope that the world ever will not hate somebody. But even though there is so little hope, it needs to be talked about, the past. How does that go, that wonderful expression? The philosopher: “Do not forget the past.”

Male voice: Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about?
LOWEN: I think we did a pretty good job covering this. I had never really done this formally, although my older daughter just about a year or two ago did a similar thing, and she wrote it all down. We were going to go over it again and revise it, and of course, we’ve never done that. She was going to type it out and so forth. She will do it, I know; we think it’s important. Unlike my mother, who did not write everything down, and I neglected to hold this microphone in front of her and this tape recorder and ask her to tell about the stories. I think it’s important to have the legacy passed on. Hopefully my grandchildren will. It will be meaningful to her. I only have one grandchild at this point. Probably that’s all I’ll ever have.

Male voice: I forgot to ask you about [inaudible].
LOWEN: The first time my husband and I went to — well, the first trip was to Spain and Portugal. That’s when I went back to the zoo. The second time I went back to Vienna and he went back to Gorlitz. That was all part of the same trip in 1976. That’s when this relative of mine had also returned to Vienna, showed me around, and we went to the cemeteries and so forth. I didn’t feel good about Austria. I feel Austrians were almost worse than Germans as far as what they did to Jews and why they did to Jews. I really don’t have much of a desire to go back to either Germany or Austria, even though this is a long time ago. It’s just not part of the world that really moves me. The French were bad, the Italians were not so great, and there are other countries that were equally evil in some ways, but there’s something about Austrians and Germans that just does not make me want to be too cozy with them.

Male voice: Have you been to Israel?
LOWEN: Yes, twice, because I have this cousin, the one who survived. In 1985 my husband did some work in Spain, professional work. A friend of mine and I were going to travel with him after he finished his consulting job, and he had a car that he was going to bring back. So we met in Barcelona, and then we drove to France and we backtracked a little bit to go to that little town where I had escaped from, Cerbera. I remembered we had spent that night before crossing the border in a hotel that had a very remarkable appearance. It was like shaped like a ship’s prow. So when we arrived in Cerbera, I thought maybe I’ll be able to find that hotel. And sure enough, right off what’s now a highway, was this place. It was so obvious because of the peculiar architecture that it was the same hotel. The town itself was still very small, and the railroad station was still there. Of course, that doesn’t change.

He took pictures of the Pyrenees and of the town of Cerbera and of the hotel. When we got back to Portland, I happened to have a few postcards — as we were emigrating, I would spend a few pennies in every little place and buy postcards. I don’t know where I got the idea, but I did. After he developed the pictures, I compared his photographs with these postcards, and amazing how little things have actually changed. That was an interesting experience, yes.

I went back to Brussels. I was just talking to Sylvia Frankl. She’s Belgian. I was telling her about going back to Brussels and finding the place where I had lived. The house is no longer there because it was replaced by a small office building, but the house where I had spent a year and a half was next door to a [condo?], which was still there. When I was returning to Brussels, I remembered some almond trees that were adjacent to the property with the condo where we used to pick up raw almonds, not dried almonds. We used to eat them fresh off the tree. Those trees are still there. It was kind of a bittersweet experience.

[At this point, the recording gets fuzzier. It sounds like Harper asks others in the room if they have any additional questions. A female voice then asks the following].

Female: Do you remember, when you were in Portland [inaudible]?
LOWEN: No, and I had no Japanese friends either. But I remember reading about it and hearing about it, other adults expressing their feelings about they shouldn’t be doing this to citizens.

Female: [inaudible]
LOWEN: Yes. In thinking back, at the high school I went to, Lincoln High School, which was probably as integrated as any high school in Portland, there were Chinese, but no Japanese students. Of course, because Lincoln drew from that whole old town area, they would have had Japanese students as well as Chinese students in my classes, but there weren’t any for obvious reasons.

Female: [inaudible]
LOWEN: Not responsible, but they were more antisemitic. A lot has been written about that. It’s not original with me. I didn’t make that up. Austrians, in many ways, were very provincial and insecure as a nation after having lost their empire. It’s a Catholic country. Germany is not such a Catholic country. Whether there’s a relationship — there probably is between an antisemitic attitude, between their images of world power and their Catholic religious attitudes of that time in particular. The Viennese Jews, they were the intellectuals, they were the movers and shakers, so to speak. And maybe there was a lot of jealousy amongst the proletariat. That’s not what they were either, but anyway. Historically speaking, supposedly the Austrians were a lot more antisemitic in their feelings proportionately than Germans. I’m not talking about the Nazis; I’m talking about Germans as a people.

Female: [inaudible]
LOWEN: The French? They betrayed the Jews also. France was divided into two parts: the Germans had occupied most of northern France, and then there was the so-called free French under — Vichy was the capital at the time. The French turned the Jews over. They wouldn’t let us out, that was one of the things. They turned them over to the Germans. There’s a lot of antisemitism in France. Just recently, all of these former Nazi sympathizers that are showing up and that are being tried again, like Klaus Barbie and a few others. Going back to Dreyfuss, as a matter of fact.

Male: You mentioned earlier about [inaudible].
LOWEN: There’s no way we got anything because the Germans then, of course, took everything that didn’t belong to somebody. The possessions were distributed or sold. We had nothing, absolutely nothing. Because we came, as I said, with absolutely nothing, we didn’t even have any photographs, but in 1960 my parents went back to Vienna for the first time, and there were people who were housekeepers of some relatives, cousins. They had been the caretakers. They had saved pictures, and they had saved a few items that my parents then were able to bring back here, some old photographs. Just a handful. But they literally came without.

Male: Did your father seek reparations?
LOWEN: The Austrians didn’t make reparations then, but they do now, and I’m receiving a very nice little pension oddly enough. Most of the reparations were for property or lack of income. The Austrians were finally persuaded as of four or five years ago. It hasn’t been that long. They are paying out of a pension fund. We’re all getting a small amount every year. It’s perfectly lovely. Now I’m waiting for the Czechs because we also own some property in Czechoslovakia, although I have no way of proving ownership. I just read recently that the Czechs are beginning to make some overtures too of compensating, but I doubt whether anything will come of that.

Harper: Thank you very much.
LOWEN: It’s been really interesting.