Lore Caro Labby

Reich: Good Morning, can you please tell me your name?
LABBY: My name is Lore Labby. My maiden name is Caro [spells it].

Reich: Where were you born?
LABBY: I was born in Düsseldorf, Germany on January 19, 1926.

Reich: Can you tell me the other members of your household their names?
LABBY: Well, it consisted of my father, George Caro; my mother Paula Caro, and I was an only child, so that’s it.

Reich: Did you know your grandparents?
LABBY: I only knew my grandmother on my father’s side, and her name is Ernestine Caro, and on my mother’s side there weren’t any grandparents living. Her maiden name was Nathan [spells it]. She had a sister and a brother who did not live in the same town as we did.

Reich: Where did they live?
LABBY: Well, the brother lived in Berlin and the sister lived in a village in Germany called Brakel, which is a tiny farm village.

Reich: And where did your grandmother live?
LABBY: She lived in what was East Germany in Breslau, Germany. That’s the part of Germany my father came from, and he was part of a large family. He had, I think, five brothers and a sister.

Reich: Can you tell me about your family’s means of support?
LABBY: My father’s you mean? Well, he had a men’s wear store in the old part of town. It was half what they called ready-made, or workman’s clothing, and on the upstairs they had the tailor-made clothing. They had tailors who made suits and that sort of thing. When he had to give up his store, he was forced to sell it at a very unrealistic price, of course, at the time. But he was forced to sell it. He had to support us still so he began to manufacture workmen’s hats in the basement of the house where we lived. I think he had maybe one or two employees that came on bicycles. They worked down there. They would cut fabric and sew it and steam it into shape on these wooden molds, and that’s what he did afterwards too, for a while. I don’t know how long anymore.

Reich: What was the name of the store, the first store that he had?
LABBY: The store that he had? I think it was called Caro and Eames. Eames must have been a partner who I think had passed away already in my lifetime. That was the name of the store. The building is destroyed; that was bombed out during the war because I have been back to see. Things have been rebuilt there, but that building is gone.

Reich: Did it cater to working class people and to upper class people?
LABBY: I don’t know really about the upper class. I’m sure that it catered to workmen because of the kind of clothing that they carried downstairs. I don’t know who patronized the upstairs. I just remember going there on Sundays and playing because there were these boxes full of buttons and there was machinery like here that would send things from downstairs to upstairs. So, I don’t know what the clientele was; I really can’t remember.

Reich: You said that it was in an older neighborhood?
LABBY: Yes, it was in what they called the “Old Town,” you know like we have an old town here in Portland. It was the old part of town.

Reich: Was it a medieval old town? 
LABBY: Was it what?

Reich: I’m wondering if it had some medieval structures?
LABBY: I don’t know how far back, but it was very old compared to the rest of the city. It’s a very big industrial city and there is a very famous bridge (the Rhine Bridge) that leads from the main part of Düsseldorf to the other side. It’s called Oberkassel and that’s where I grew up. That’s all residential. 

Reich: Can you spell that?
LABBY: Oberkassel [spells it]. That’s just like Beaverton would be to Portland, only separated by the Rhine River. This bridge was forever getting bombed during the war. That was one of the big bombing missions, to destroy that bridge over the Rhine, as well as many others.

Reich: Was it a Jewish neighborhood?
LABBY: No, it was mixed totally. There was a very large beautiful synagogue, which of course, was destroyed in the main part of town. But the other is just a residential.

Reich: Did you attend the synagogue?
LABBY: I don’t remember a lot, it’s been a long time. But I remember it being very beautiful, an enormous structure with a lot of marble, and very beautiful. I did go back in 1989 and there’s a new synagogue built, which is much more modest in size. Of course, the population isn’t there anymore.

Reich: Is it in the same location?
LABBY: No, no. There’s a memorial where the old one was. That’s all that’s left of it. I have pictures of it, but I didn’t bring them. It’s very easy to overlook. It’s a marble slab with “In Memoriam,” and that’s about it.

Reich: Did your family fraternize with mostly Jews or non-Jews? I’m trying to get an idea of your Jewish background.
LABBY: I think most of their friends were Jewish, but most of them were very much Reformed. We did not observe a lot of anything. We barely managed the holidays. I think I learned more about it after Hitler came, about Judaism, and having to attend a Jewish private school, which was wonderful at the time. But, no, we did not have a very religiously oriented life at all. As did a lot of our friends, it seemed they just sort of blended into the landscape more.

Reich: Do you remember celebrating any of the holidays? Going to synagogue? 
LABBY: I do remember some of it and I remember fasting. But, you know, I remember the holidays somewhat in connection with the food. There were so many things going on in my childhood, personally. My mother was ill from the time I was born and she died when I was 11 of cancer. So there were a lot of things happening. I was shuttled back and forth to relatives across the country here and there. All the Hitler prosecutions started, and my school life was changed and I was ultimately boarded out to different people’s homes because my father would vanish for periods of time. He was not around so other people took care of me. 

So there was a lot more happening than just being Jewish. I was very aware of being Jewish, but the holidays and all that, I don’t really remember, except occasionally going to synagogue. I even changed schools in this period. I was sent from Düsseldorf, from the private Jewish school to Berlin, to a private Jewish school for a while. I think my father had to vanish here and there. He was fortunately not interned, but to my great regret, I never really knew a lot. I have since heard that he would help people escape to Belgium occasionally, but he and I never discussed these things. From that time, he and I were the only ones that were left in my immediate family when we came over and joined other family.

Reich: Do you know where he was vanishing to?
LABBY: No, no I really didn’t.

Reich: Do you know why?
LABBY: Well, he was being looked for occasionally. We did have Nazis come into the house when my mother was still alive. I vividly remember. They made her go up in the house to look for God knows what when she was a very sick woman, and my father would just disappear here and there. As I said, I was a little girl and didn’t know anything much. I think they didn’t want to tell me where he was. So he would take care of me by farming me out someplace to stay with people for a while. I know after school I would go to someone’s home and then he would come in the evening and retrieve me. By the time we left, which was the day after my 14th birthday, I don’t remember where he had been, but I know that he came in the morning in a cab and got me from where I had been staying with a family. We were fortunate; we got on a train. This was January 20, 1940, which is very, very late. But that’s because our quota number didn’t come up until that date. He would disappear, he would hide, and he would also be active doing things. I know he made trips to Brussels and so forth. I was fortunate that we had a family here in Portland already who gave us visas. Eventually we left, went through Switzerland to Italy, and sailed [to the United States].

Reich: Before we get on to that, I wanted to ask you about your family’s political orientation. 
LABBY: Current you mean?

Reich: No. I’m wondering if your father was a political activist of some sort?
LABBY: I don’t know. He was in the German army like everybody else during the First World War, but I don’t really know of anything. A lot of things you don’t know when you’re very little. Things are going on that are just not interesting to you as a little girl. I was busy growing up by myself and playing and then being unable to play with my playmates anymore because they weren’t allowed to play with me, and things changed. I honestly don’t think my father was very involved politically. But then I could be very wrong. I don’t know.

Reich: Was there any discussion of Zionism that you recall?
LABBY: Well, more so at school. By that time I was going to a school where we were being taught Hebrew and English. We started them both at the same time, and it was with the intent that if we were going to Israel (or Palestine in those days), we would be able to speak the language. We also had French. It’s easy when you’re little. It’s hard later on.

Reich: If it’s possible, is there a typical day you can describe from your early childhood?
LABBY: Early childhood? From before the Nazi era?

Reich: Well, yes.
LABBY: Do you mean preschool or school age? I think things were pretty prescribed in those days. There were certain times of the year you wore certain clothes. You were allowed to wear knee socks when spring came and wool socks when winter came. You played certain games in certain seasons out in the streets. Certain ball games and hide and seek. That sort of thing. In the wintertime we were inside and played with dolls and teddy bears. We had little friends that lived all around the neighborhood, and being an only child, I was pretty dependent on my friends. 

It was just sort of pretty much the same thing, day in and day out. You played and you came home and we at. When I went to school, I think we would come home and we’d eat our big meal around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon. My father would come home from his business. Then he would stay home a couple hours and he would usually even have a nap, then go back and work until late in the day, until six or seven at night. 

I know that when I came home from school I would sit and do my homework on a little blackboard. At first it was chalk and later on we went to pencil and paper and ink. It was pretty routinized. You memorized. I remember going to a funeral with my father once (someone at school had passed away) and I remember going through the cemetery with him, holding on to his hand, and he made me recite my multiplication tables [laughs]. You did what you were told pretty much and you took your learning very seriously in those days.

Reich: Did your mother stay at home or was she hospitalized?
LABBY: She was home, except when she’d go to the hospital for surgery. She had several surgeries. In Europe in those days, you had help at home. We had someone to take care of the household and someone who would take care of me until I went to school. I don’t remember other than people would come and cook and clean and that sort of thing. But that was not unusual; everyone pretty much lived that way.

Reich: Do you categorize your family in a class, an economic class?
LABBY: Probably middle class. I think that’s about adequate, or right.

Reich: At what age did you start school?
LABBY: Six, as far as I can remember.

Reich: What type of school did you go to?
LABBY: I went to a public school in Oberkassel, and I brought pictures to show you of my first class. That must have been about 1932. About ’33 or ’34 I changed to a Jewish school. Interestingly, I found one of my teachers again from my private Jewish school. He had emigrated to London and later on to the Los Angeles area, to Orange County, California. He became a college professor. He and his wife both. They’re still alive and in their 80s. The really funny thing is his son, their one and only child, went to Reed College, where I also went later. He’s much younger than I am, it’s a different generation. He must be early 50s now. It’s a small world, isn’t it? It’s incredible.

Reich: Can you remember any of (I‘m also again thinking before the Nazis really started to come to power) the cultural activities that your family was involved in?
LABBY: I wish I could tell you. I know they were art collectors and this city where we lived in Düsseldorf was really a cultural center. We had plays, we had all kinds of performances. I know that they attended these things, but it was pretty general. I don’t remember music as much as plays, but maybe that’s because I was taken to these things. I had a pretty active cultural life in that city, and it still is. 

Reich: Do you have any idea what level of education your parents received?
LABBY: No. I can’t help you. It’s awful, the things you don’t think to ask when you’re young and have the opportunity. Well, I think my mother must have had some form of business education other than her schooling because I think she was in business (I don’t know what kind) before she married. Then she stayed home. My father probably went to the normal public school, to gymnasium, and then I think he became something like an apprentice in the men’s wear business. He became a buyer and then eventually opened his own business. I don’t really know how many years he attended school.

Reich: Did either of your parents know Hebrew?
LABBY: I don’t know; I can’t remember. Possibly. It’s been a long time my father’s been gone as I said. When you grow up and when we came over here – we were busy getting acclimatized. I had a whole week from the time I landed in Portland until I was in school. From then on, I was learning English and [trying to] fit in. And somehow, among most of my friends, the pattern has been the same. Hardly any of us ever talked to our parents about what happened in Germany, and they never volunteered. 

I found that to be a very general condition amongst [my friends]. I have many friends who come from similar backgrounds and none of us amongst each other ever discussed it either. What we had been through or not been through, or exactly how things happened. It’s only in the last maybe three or four years that we’re all beginning to kind of think back and discuss it amongst each other. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because we’re getting old and we’re afraid of not passing it on. We haven’t talked to our children particularly about it, or amongst each other. It’s just beginning to change now and I think it took all these years. I don’t know why it took so long, I really don’t.

Reich: Can you begin to tell me about the changes you started to experience in the early ‘30s with the Nazi rise to power? 
LABBY: Well, it totally changed our life. Economically, it affected my family, of course, by having to give up their business and starting over. I remember my parents having financial discussions about things that I don’t remember from earlier times. I remember that my life changed totally because I no longer had my little friends that I normally played with every day. They were not allowed to talk to me anymore. It got worse than not talking. There would be rocks thrown when you walked. You couldn’t go to the school.

Reich: Do you remember that particular change, playing with you and then not playing with you? How did that happen?
LABBY: I think that they were told by their parents. It became very important for them not to because it was dangerous for them to be seen with Jewish children, Jewish families, or come to the house. It was just not possible for them anymore to do it. There were all these newspapers and the cartoons, and then the radios. Jews were rotten and horrible, and it was very frightening to them. They weren’t going to use their own opinion. They were intimidated and they were told by their parents that if they played with me, they would be in danger. Not just me personally, but all Jewish children. It was just a complete break.

There were people who I’m sure helped my father in some ways, maybe to hide him. And we had employees who were non-Jewish who continued to work for him for a while. As far as my daily life, it changed completely, and of course everybody said I was very fortunate that I had nothing worse. I was able to remain and not get interned, or not get tortured. We were frightened most of the time, and scared, but remained alive. I remember things like my mother and a maid packing up things, like silver in laundry baskets and they had to be taken someplace to be melted down. I was in Berlin when Kristallnacht happened and I remember for some reason I was on the train going to school (I guess it was a train going and seeing all of this) and seeing all the broken glass and all the horrible things that was in the different school then. But somehow I was a little girl and I was protected by elders and by friends and relatives. I didn’t experience a lot of the terrible things that other people did. I was lucky.

Reich: Did any of your childhood friends ever articulate to you why they couldn’t play with you anymore?
LABBY: No. They may have. I think they vanished and went their own ways. These were all little neighborhoods. They were just not available for me and I don’t think it took me very long to catch. We all knew what was happening and I think they were as afraid as we were.

Reich: Do you remember what year your father sold his business?
LABBY: No, I could probably look it up, but it was early on, because we left in the beginning of 1940 and that was many years later. So probably 1933 or ‘34. It didn’t take long.

Reich: Can you tell me about the Jewish school that you transferred to?
LABBY: Well, it was a school that was rapidly organized and they recruited teachers very quickly. This was a non-existent school. In the beginning it was held in a part of the synagogue like here. Of course, when the synagogue was destroyed they moved it to another location and it had a lot of very young teachers. They were very able and as I said, some of them are still around.

Reich: What did they teach?
LABBY: What did they teach? Well, we had arithmetic, the languages and a little science. I think generally it was aimed at preparing us for a very different life, to emigrate. They took great pains to teach us handicrafts, so to speak, so we could help make a living in another country. We had sewing classes where they taught us how to make little art objects and things (I don’t know what the boys learned). And they concentrated on languages in order to prepare us. Everybody knew that either we would emigrate or else. 

Reich: When did you know that? When did you first come to that understanding?
LABBY: I think right from the very beginning. I had an uncle who had left Germany in 1933 already and it was pretty much in all our awareness. I think there were a lot of people who didn’t want to admit that they were going to have to leave. They thought this couldn’t happen to them. Surely things would right themselves. He had been very astute in gauging the temper of the times; he left and went to France. I think from the very beginning it was planned that we would eventually follow. Then he eventually left from southern France, to Paris, to Portland. The plan was that we were to follow. 

The rest of my father’s family that were not able to come to the United States were able to go to South America. There’s still a group of them in Brazil, whom I was fortunate to be able to visit in 1987. Of course, this is all my age group that’s alive. Their parents are long gone, like mine.

Reich: Was the Jewish school a Zionist school? Were they preparing you to go to Israel?
LABBY: No. There were a lot of people going to go to Israel from there, but there were a lot of people going to London. There were children’s transports in those days and it was not particularly only to go to Israel; it was to prepare us for wherever we might go. Also, I think they concentrated on giving us a Jewish pride sort of a feeling, with all the attacking that we were receiving. They wanted us to know that it’s OK to be Jewish, and that it was wonderful. That was the gist of the school. They gave us the basic education, the basic tools. By the time I ended up here, I think I was pretty well on par educationally with what I was then put into, which was high school.

Reich: Do you remember what year you went to the Jewish school?
LABBY: Not exactly. It might have been ’35 or ’36 on.

Reich: Did it have a name?
LABBY: I couldn’t tell you. It was just the private Jewish school in Düsseldorf. I have report cards and things at home. We saved absolutely every scrap of paper from the time. What is it when you get injected against TB? I mean everything has a piece of paper. I think my father saved every piece of paper. When we came over, one of our suitcases was stolen by the time we got off the train in Italy and before we could get on the boat, so we didn’t arrive with much. But what was left, somehow the papers were there. I wish I knew more to remember, but there were a lot of things going on that most of us have blocked pretty much.

Reich: While you were going to the Jewish school, what do you remember about the political climate, outside of your family and outside of school?
LABBY: Yes, we had a radio and we had newspapers. We read, and there were posters up. There was no question in anyone’s mind what was going on. Hitler was in power and was getting stronger. Part of it was the campaign against Jews, and we were very painfully aware of everything that was happening. You couldn’t escape it. It was on every kiosk. It was plastered with caricatures of Jews and it was everywhere. It’s kind of hard to remember, how to describe it. It was so all-pervasive. It was not a matter of not knowing. You lived in fear and you walked in fear, and you had slim rations. You were lucky when you were OK.

Reich: How did you feel about that from your child’s eyes, a kind of isolation?
LABBY: I think children adjust to everything. I know I had many years later a letter from someone who said that I had had such a difficult childhood. That was the first I was aware of it. You live each day and you don’t know any better anymore. I mean, you somehow survive losing a mother and you survive being shunted around. That’s just the way your own life is at that time and you don’t know what you’re missing; you don’t dwell on it. You don’t think about it really. I didn’t think I lived a life any different than anybody else of my friends. 

I remember going to a home with one of my friends and her mother that the Nazis had come in and totally demolished – broken staircases and smashed paintings and seeing all this. But it was all around us. Everybody that I associated with was in the same situation. We had all lost things. You compare it to the Depression where everybody had problems, so it becomes a norm. I’m sure in the long run it affected all of us and shaped our personalities, but while you’re in the middle of it, you don’t think about it or compare it to what was before. You just go on and I think you adjust from day to day to whatever it is.

Reich: Were you able to feel good about your Judaism?
LABBY: Oh, yes. That was a very positive part, and I think I began to attend services a lot more from that time on than we had before, which is not something to be proud of, but that’s really how it affected all of us. 

Reich: How did you get to Berlin?
LABBY: To Portland, Oregon?

Reich: No, what brought you to Berlin from Düsseldorf?
LABBY: Oh, my mother’s brother lived there and I think it was a time when my father evidently couldn’t take care of me. I was put on the train to go visit there and enroll in school, and they were able to keep me for a while. 

Reich: What year did you leave for Berlin?
LABBY: Well, whatever year Kristallnacht was, I can’t remember. Was it ’38? I think it was ’38. I can’t tell you how long I was there either anymore. Maybe a year.

Reich: You arrived during Kristallnacht?
LABBY: No, no, I was already in school and going to school that morning. I had already been enrolled in the school there, and I don’t know the name of that school either, except I remember that at playtime we played in the cemetery. It was a little Jewish cemetery in back of the synagogue where the school was. I’ve been trying to find other people who went to this school to find out what its name was because I think there were two or three private Jewish schools running in Berlin at that time. But I’ve not ever established the name of it, and I don’t have any papers from that era. 

Reich: Can you tell me in detail what you remember about Kristallnacht?
LABBY: I remember being on this train and looking down and seeing all the storefronts smashed in and it just being destruction. We must have not had anything happening in the building where I was living at the time with my uncle, because otherwise I don’t think they would have put me on the train to go to school. I don’t remember when I got to school, whether I was sent home or anything. I just remember seeing all this destruction as I was looking in the streets.

Reich: The school was in the synagogue?
LABBY: Yes.

Reich: And you went to school that day?
LABBY: I can’t remember. I remember being at that school for a while, but whether we were left there that day or sent home, I cannot remember. I just remember being on the train and seeing all this glass everywhere and knowing what it was today. Well, I would have been like eleven or twelve, not quite. I should remember, but there are a lot of things that I don’t remember that probably have been shoved so far back, they may never come up again.

Reich: Had your mother already died at this point? Was she still alive when you were eleven?
LABBY: She died in November 1938, and I think it was pretty close. Do you know the date of [Kristallnacht]?

Harper: November.
LABBY: Yes, it was November. She died I think, actually, I think it was October 31. That’s probably why I was sent to Berlin at that particular point, it was after the funeral. There was probably no one at home to take care of me anymore. My father had to make arrangements. I did go back when we went in 1989, and I could not find my mother’s grave. We looked in both the very old Jewish cemetery and then the newer one. Somehow, evidently what happened, there wasn’t a stone put down at the time, so I don’t know. I was not able to locate it.

Reich: Did she have a Jewish funeral?
LABBY: I don’t remember. I don’t remember going to it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t go. There are things like that you sometimes block when you are a child. I’m sure I must have gone.

Reich: Can you tell me, after Kristallnacht how did your life change and about the decision to leave Germany?
LABBY: I don’t know that it changed anymore after than before, and the decision to leave had been made earlier. It was a matter of waiting it out and getting the proper papers and waiting for your number to come up. That was your visa number or whatever, to be able to leave. We were just lucky we were still able to get out. The boat that we finally left on was sunk on the way back. It was already war in Europe and we just were very fortunate. I had been asked to go to London earlier. There were all these children’s transports that were organized to save the children, but at that point I had already lost my mother, and I was not about to leave my father. So I just refused to even consider going. As I said, we were lucky we were able to get out still.

Reich: Did any family members disappear during Kristallnacht? Or shortly after?
LABBY: I don’t know. There were so many that are gone totally, whether they disappeared then. We happened to be the only family in Düsseldorf of all our family that lived there, so it was just he and I. Ultimately, the uncle I lived with in Berlin did not survive, nor did a whole lot of my cousins. There was nobody on my mother’s side except two cousins who had emigrated much earlier. On my father’s side, some of them as I’ve told you, went to Brazil and got out. They emigrated even before we did because they came to say good-by to us. I don’t know when they left anymore, maybe in ‘37 or so.

Reich: Did your uncle attempt to emigrate?
LABBY: I don’t recall. I don’t know. I know he had a son who was my cousin. I don’t think he survived, nor most of the other cousins on my mother’s side. They all were killed. My aunt (my mother’s sister) was killed and all her children but the two that left early. I’ve lost track of them. What family I have left really is on my father’s side.

Reich: Did you become aware of any of the camps before you left Germany?
LABBY: No. I knew that people were taken away; I didn’t know where they went. The horror was to be taken and to be caught and taken, but it didn’t go beyond that. I didn’t realize where they were being taken to, whether it was a camp. It was just a real frightening, horrible thing, but I never saw anybody actually being taken that I was aware of. As I said, probably we were protected as children from knowing a lot. My father never told me anything about where he was going or who had gone where, or where they had gone. It took a whole long many years later before I knew really what had become of all of them. 

Reich: Do you remember when war was declared on Poland?
LABBY: Yes, I remember the airplanes flying over. It was 1939 in September. I vividly remember that I associate it with airplanes and noise.

Reich: Flying over Berlin?
LABBY: Well, by this time I was back in Düsseldorf and they were flying over. Way on the west near Holland, near the borders of Holland. 

Reich: What kinds of things did you hear on the radio?
LABBY: It was all victories. Germans conquering. 

Reich: How did you feel about it?
LABBY: I don’t remember anything except fear for that whole era. I don’t know that I thought about it, whether they were victorious or not victorious. It was just all a blur of fright and wondering whether you would survive. It wasn’t any better for us, believe me. It was more frightening all the time. Maybe I was aware of things more that I just can’t recall now. I just remember hearing airplanes flying over all the time and people talking about bombs. But whether or not they were victorious or not, I don’t think that part entered my mind. I don’t know that I cared or didn’t care. I just can’t remember.

Reich: Did you feel that it was your war, too?
LABBY: No. No. I don’t think I felt German anymore at that point. I was just plain Jewish and that was not part of my concern.

Reich: Did you associate the violence that you heard about on the radio with the fear that you felt from being Jewish?
LABBY: I think everything played towards that and you know, we were certainly a threatened species, and I think we were all aware of that. Everything was our fault. It’s something you didn’t internalize. At this point I was I think very proud to be Jewish, but you didn’t assume the guilt of being. That didn’t happen but the fear for your life and everybody you knew, their lives, that was all part of that era.

Reich: You mentioned that you were in Berlin and went back to Düsseldorf. When did you go back to Düsseldorf?
LABBY: I don’t exactly recall, but I know I went back to school there. Somewhere along the way, I have been contacted by some of the students I went to school with, which is sort of neat. A book came out – there’s a woman in Düsseldorf who is an extremely sympathetic lady – she’s writing books and gathering information. They made a list of some of the Jews who lived there and where they went to, and they have contacted them. Since this little book came out with addresses of these people who are still alive, I’ve heard from classmates of mine from my childhood, which is just sort of fantastic. I have re-established contact with a friend in whose home I was being taken care of for many weeks who lives in Brussels.

Reich: A Jewish friend?
LABBY: Oh, yes, a Jewish friend. And her mother is still alive. Her sister immigrated to Israel, but they ended up in Brussels. So I’m in contact with her and a few other people that I correspond with and I recently saw somebody in Florida whose sister was one of my closest girlfriends. At that point we belonged to a little Jewish sports club and we ran races and that sort of thing. High-jumped and broad-jumped and did competitive sports with other Jewish clubs from other cities. Anyway, this friend’s older brother had written, and now I’ve heard from the lady now. I think of ourselves as girls, but we’re all grandmothers now. There’s been a resurgence of people trying to contact people they knew as children. We all went to school in the same class. It’s been kind of amazing. This has all just happened in the last five years.

Reich: Because of this book that came out?
LABBY: Well, I think generally people are more interested at this age in retrieving some of their childhood, their memories. I think we’re past the point of having to struggle to establish a life, and we can now sort of look back a little more; it’s not as painful as it maybe was earlier.

Reich: Can you tell me about leaving? What you did?
LABBY: Leaving?

Reich: About leaving Germany?
LADDY: Yes, I remember unimportant things like my father who was then a widower, and trying to get us ready to go. I remember I had a coat made for the long journey, and a dress and this and that. I arrived here pretty sad looking, and skinny, and bedraggled, and green around the gills. People who helped my father get me ready said I would grow on the trip over. It was a long journey to Portland, Oregon, and I was still in the growing age. But anyway I arrived with things pretty well down around my ankles, not having had a whole lot of good food for a long time, and having been seasick and not being a good eater to boot. I eventually arrived here and people thought they might not bring me around. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I have grown.

Reich: Did you leave by train from Düsseldorf?
LABBY: We left on a train and went from Düsseldorf through Switzerland into Italy.

Reich: When did you leave Düsseldorf?
LABBY: I know exactly, the day after my 14th birthday – January 20, 1940. I remember being on the train and the borders in Switzerland being very frightened that something would happen, that we would get thrown off the train and not make it. Eventually, getting to Italy, which also was not a charming experience. Anyhow, I remember getting off the train on the platform, seeing the people. It was winter and it was cold. People were very poor in Italy, carrying coals in little cigar boxes. It was also a country that was getting into the war and there were – I can’t think of the word, what were they? They weren’t Nazis…

Harper: Fascists.
LABBY: Fascists, right. So that was not a real happy place to be either, but we got on the boat and that was it.

Reich: Your father was with you?
LABBY: Yes, my dad and I came together, and he lived until 1956.

Reich: Did you get off the train at all in Switzerland?
LABBY: Oh, no. We just sat there, pretty much shaking in our boots hoping nobody would change their mind about us going, visa and all. I think we spent one night in Genoa, somewhere in a hotel. As I said, one of our pieces of luggage vanished immediately. It was stolen. Eventually we came to New York and stayed with friends of my family’s in New York for a few days. I vividly remember they must have had a beauty school in New York, these people. I was taken somewhere to have my hair styled, and I remember sitting with my back to a mirror. I didn’t see what they were doing and when they turned me around, I had no idea who that was, nor what to do with what they had done to me. It was sort of like I had turned into this curly lamb all of a sudden. Anyway, it was a very strange experience. We eventually left New York after a week or ten days and went to Chicago where we stayed with my mother’s girlfriend, childhood friend and girlfriend. Then we took a bus from Chicago cross-country through Salt Lake City and came to Portland, where we were met by my aunt and cousin.

Reich: How long did your train ride take?
LABBY: I don’t remember. I knew it was nighttime at one point, so probably just from morning until evening. I don’t remember.

Reich: Did you spend one night off the train?
LABBY: I think so, maybe one or two in Italy.

Reich: Did you go out at all while you were in Italy?
LABBY: I don’t think very much. It was not the time to explore a foreign country. You know, it was just sort of hoping and praying you would get from where you were on to that ship and go, and not get killed on the way.

Reich: Where did the ship leave from?
LABBY: Genoa.  

Reich: Do you know the name of the ship?
LABBY: Yes. It was called the Conte di Savoia and as I said, it was sunk on the way back to Italy.

Reich: It was an Italian boat?
LABBY: Italian boat. It was a sister ship to one called The Rex, which I think survived longer.

Reich: What class did you ride?
LABBY: I don’t remember. It was not horrendous. I don’t think we were in the bottom of a boat or anything. I remember being up on top. I was seasick for the six days that it took. It was wintertime; it was rough. I remember the piano sliding back and forth on the ship. I remember people telling me to eat oranges because it would help me from getting seasick or something, but I don’t remember that I was crammed in with anybody or anything like that. There was another man who ended up in Portland, Oregon on this ship. I think his name was Shulhaus. A very tall man who later had a grocery store here in Portland. He may still be alive. My father was in contact with him; I wasn’t.

Reich: You said your father went to France?
LABBY: Well, my uncle immigrated to France and then my father went to see him.

Reich: When did your uncle go?
LABBY: He’s the one that left in 1933, and he came to Portland and sent for us. His name was Fred Carr. It used to be Caro, but they changed it to Carr, thinking that was Anglicizing it. That’s my cousin Bernard whom we talked about earlier today. It’s his son. My father’s brother.

Reich: When did your father visit him in France?
LABBY: Well it was in the ‘30s somewhere between maybe ’34 or ’35, in there. I think the agreement was made that we were to follow them eventually. We were very lucky that he left so early and he was able to take his possessions with him early on. He had somehow the means to send for us, or to be able to give us a visa.

Reich: I’m curious, when you were on the ship, who else was on the ship?
LABBY: As I said, the one man that I remember, maybe he and his whole family. I just remember him because he was so tall; it was an extremely tall man. I remember I saw my first or second black person on the ship, and I was very impressed as a 14 year old. It was a gentleman, I don’t know who he was or what he was, but I remember that. I don’t remember much of anything, except that I was sick most of the time, standing at the edge of the ship, leaning over the rail. That was part of my trip.

Reich: Do you know if there were many other Jews on the boat?
LABBY: I don’t remember much about it.

Harper: Did you grow up in a house or an apartment?
LABBY: It’s called a flat. It’s a little different; it’s one level of a house.

Harper: You had people below and above you?
LABBY: Yes.

Harper: Do you remember the name of the street?
LABBY: Yes, [Columbustrasse?].

Harper: And your neighbors, they were not Jewish?
LABBY: No. The people that owned the house lived on the bottom, on the street level. We were upstairs and there was one other floor above us. There were the mansard rooms where the maids slept.

Harper: You mentioned your father was in World War I?
LABBY: Yes.

Harper: Can you talk in more detail about that? Do you know where he fought?
LABBY: No. I have pictures of him in uniform, and I don’t really know where he fought or anything.

Harper: Do you remember him ever wearing his medals or seeing them?
LABBY: No.

Harper: Do you know if he was he wounded or anything like that?
LABBY: Not that I know of. I don’t recall that he was wounded. I just know that he was in the First World War, in the service, and that I have pictures of him from that era, and post cards that he sent to his brothers and all, in uniform. But I don’t know where he fought.

Harper: Your switch to the Jewish school, is that the first thing you remember about being sort of segregated or being marked as different?
LABBY: Pretty much. I think it was almost simultaneous with being separated from my friends in the neighborhood.

Harper: You were maybe 11 then?
LABBY: Well, I’m trying to think. Yes, 10 or 11. I was born in ’26; I was probably about 10 or 11. Earlier I think; I think it might have been earlier than that. I should look at my report cards and I’ll get back to you and tell you exactly.

Harper: Is that really the first thing you noticed, like your life was sort of normal and then all of a sudden you had to go to another school. Do you remember?
LABBY: No, it was more gradual than that. I think it wasn’t just overnight that I went to a different school. We knew why we were going to a different school and what it was all about. I think there had been instances of things long before, but I don’t recall the sequence exactly anymore. 

Harper: Do you recall not being able to go to movie houses or parts of the city, or things like that?
LABBY: No, I don’t remember that at all. I remember going to a lot of movies when I was a little girl because I had an uncle who somehow was involved with the movie industry. I don’t know how, whether he sold movies or rented movies. But whenever he would come to town, I would always get all these passes. It was a neighborhood movie I went to. I don’t remember not being able to go to it. I remember being taken to plays. But there was also probably a concerted effort on the part of my family to get me out of the house a lot (whether that was before the Nazis came or not) because of the fact my mother was so very ill. She had what turned out to be cancer of the stomach. There was a lot of suffering and pain and all that, and a lot of doctor visits. I think part of it I can’t remember was being sent away to do all these things to give me a balanced life, rather than seeing her suffer. I have a hunch there’s an overlap there.

Harper: You said your mom died in ’37. Is that right?
LABBY: Yes, I was 11. Yes, it was ’37.

Harper: Do you remember, did your father lose his shop before that or after your mother died?
LABBY: I think it must have been before because I remember that there was financial worry in the household when my mother was still alive. It must have had to do with the Nazis and with losing the business.

Harper: And then, your seeing Kristallnacht. I think you briefly mentioned this. Were you able to understand what all that destruction you saw was about? 
LABBY: Yes, oh yes.

Reich: You knew that it was violence against Jews?
LABBY: Yes, oh yes. I was aware of that. It was ongoing. It might have been a more visible sign, but there were so many things happening to people. People were vanishing and all their livelihoods were being changed and taken away. It was a lot more than just the fact that the glass was broken and things were destroyed. I think there was some of it before too. That was just a major effort.

Harper: Do you remember the Olympics being held?
LABBY: Yes, I remember Jesse Owens. I was very much an athlete at that point in my life. Oh yes. I know we were all so excited that a black man from America won. I think we associated with that.

Harper: Were you in Berlin at all at that time?
LABBY: I don’t remember where I was exactly, whether that’s where I was or not. I know we followed it avidly as children.

Harper: Do you recall any restrictions being eased or lifted?
LABBY: During that time? No. I don’t think that I had any part or even would anticipate going to it. I don’t think that entered our realm of reality. It’s just that we were aware of it and followed it in the papers and heard it on the radio. It was a very exciting part of my life. I remember that.

Harper: Do you recall hearing discussion or did you talk with your father about securing visas. Do you know when you started to do that, what year your family applied?
LABBY: No. It was an ongoing thing and I know we had to go out of town at one time to appear in front of a consulate.

Harper: Do you remember if that was maybe after Kristallnacht or beforehand?
LABBY: No, I couldn’t tell you.

Harper: Did you fill out any papers, or your father just did it?
LABBY: I imagine my father did; I know I went along. I think we also had physicals. You had to prove you didn’t have diseases, and I know that one of my cousins was unable to emigrate because she had tuberculosis at that point.

Harper: And you knew that you would be going to the United States?
LABBY: Yes.

Harper: Because of the family there.
LABBY: Yes, that had been planned. Well, I think in 1938 I went to Paris to visit part of my family in France, the ones that then left and came to Portland. It was already agreed then that I would be coming to see them eventually.

Harper: Do you remember if you had to get an affidavit from them?
LABBY: From them? Yes, but that did not hasten your place in line exactly. You took whatever they gave you.

Harper: After the war began, did you notice a change? Did restrictions get tighter, did you notice? Did every day life in the city change, to your recollection at all?
LABBY: I think food was even scarcer. There was rationing and that sort of thing. I think our life was so changed that I don’t think that that made any appreciable difference to us anymore. It might have to my dad and to grown-ups, but to me as a child, I don’t know that I would have been aware of any differences.

Harper: OK. Well, thanks.
Reich: So, back in New York. Did you come into the New York harbor? Where did you dock?
LABBY: Yes, and I remember being in some enormous room. I think it was HIAS, the Hebrew International Aid Society, that I think we were greeted there. I think our papers were processed there in one way or another. I don’t remember whether I went any place else other than that.

Reich: So the first place you went after you got off the boat?
LABBY: Yes. I think probably these friends must have come and gotten us. I don’t recall.

Reich: How long did you stay in New York?
LABBY: I think maybe 10 days or a week. Just long enough for me to listen to the radio and realize they spoke very differently from what I had learned in school. For some reason I decided I wasn’t going to speak English until I got to where I was going because it didn’t sound right at all. We had been taught English like they speak in England in school. In New York, on the radio, it didn’t sound like that. I was hopeful, and I was right. When we got here, it was different.

Reich: What other impressions did you have of New York when you first got there?
LABBY: Well, I don’t remember much except that we were pretty much surrounded by old friends. Different people my father had known that were in New York I’m sure all came to greet him. As I said, they tried to Americanize me very quickly (physically) by doing me over and that’s about all I remember from that stay in New York.

Reich: Was it a frightening place, or a welcoming place?
LABBY: No, it might have been welcoming. I don’t even recall; it wasn’t frightening. By that time I had traveled a lot and been to quite a few cities in my life, so I don’t think it entered my mind to be frightened. After all, I had come from a frightening life, and this was like a haven. It was not a frightening experience.

Reich: I don’t know if you were there long enough to see anything?
LABBY: No.

Reich: New York was in such a political center of the debate about going to war and such. Did you see the demonstrations in the streets or political demonstrations?
LABBY: No. I might have. I don’t remember it. It wasn’t that much later that we did get into the war. It was another year. 

Reich: Right.
LABBY: I somehow I think I assumed all along that America would get into the war because it was so horrible. In those days I didn’t know that much about isolationism or “America first,” or any of these things.

Reich: Did you attend synagogue while you were there?
LABBY: In New York? Not that I remember. Nor in Chicago.

Reich: How long were you in Chicago?
LABBY: About a week again. It was just sort of short stops, touching base with people from my father’s life.

Reich: Did you say you took the train or the bus from New York to Chicago?
LABBY: I can’t remember. I only remember the bus ride from Chicago to Portland. That was pretty amazing; it was icy, and we’d see things in ditches along the way. It was very frightening. That was a whole new experience and I remember my father telling me that in Oregon they build houses out of wood. I had not ever seen houses built out of wood up until that point and he said, “Every morning you have to go around with nails and a hammer and pound it all back together” [laughs]. It was really kind of funny. He had a wonderful sense of humor. But anyway, that was quite a trip coming through ice and snow on the buses.

Reich: What did you see in the distance?
LABBY: Cars, accidents. I remember one of the words I had learned was roast beef and I remember stopping at bus stops and ordering roast beef sandwiches. When they would come they weren’t what I had expected: you know, bread and meat. They were mounds of mashed potatoes and gravy, and I was a very weird child and I wouldn’t eat it, so I lived cross-country on ice cream. You can imagine what I looked like when I got here.

Reich: How long did it take for you to regain your health when you got off the boat?
LABBY: Oh, I don’t think it was very long. I was a young and resilient kid and I’m sure they fed me up a little bit back there.

Reich: Actually, I forgot to ask you. When you were met when you first got off the boat, which organization did you say it was?
LABBY: I think it was HIAS, which is still in existence.

Reich: What did they say to you? To everyone, the group that you were with?
LABBY: I haven’t the vaguest idea. I just remember masses of people, and when you asked me earlier, there must have been many Jewish people on the boat, you know, to fill this hall. But I don’t particularly remember the boat trip other than very few instances and a very few people. I wish I did.

Reich: How did you get to Portland?
LABBY: By bus; by greyhound bus eventually. We were met at the bus depot by my family who were here.

Reich: Do you know when you arrived?
LABBY: I know we arrived in New York on the first of February 1940, and I don’t remember exactly when we got here. 

Reich: A couple weeks later.
LABBY: Yes, about. I started Franklin High School the week after that. That was a wonderful experience.

Reich: Franklin High School? Why?
LABBY: Well, they were very friendly and I think my cousin [Vernart?] and I were the only Jewish immigrants at Franklin High School; it was kind of a novelty. They wanted to help; they were very sweet from the principal on down to the other students. It was a very helpful experience.

Reich: What was your legal status?
LABBY: Immigrant.

Reich: Immigrant. 
LABBY: Yes.

Reich: Did that change after Pearl Harbor?
LABBY: I think for a while we were on a curfew. We were Germans in the eyes of the government here, so we came under a curfew. 

Reich: Was that right away? Or did that happen after ’41?
LABBY: Yes. After. I think when we joined, when America went into the war. The Japanese were I think under the same, only they got deported; the Germans, I think, just had to observe a curfew. I don’t remember what it was – early evening, I think, until morning that you couldn’t go out. It didn’t present a problem particularly.

Reich: Did the students that you went to school with at Franklin have much awareness of what was going on in Europe and why you had come to Portland?
LABBY: I don’t know how aware they were. They were, as I said, extremely nice and probably curious. I know I was asked to make speeches at school after a while, and I think it was mostly about the comparative school systems than about Nazis and being Jewish. I think maybe that I probably assumed everybody knew, which was probably, like most assumptions, wrong. 

Reich: You didn’t encounter hostility because you were German?
LABBY: Oh, no. I really never did.

Reich: What did your dad do?
LABBY: My father, in the beginning, didn’t do anything. My family had rented him a room in the home next door. I was housed with the family in the house. Somewhere along the way I think my uncle bought a small apartment house next door to another one, and my dad and he jointly owned it. My father moved there and ran it. Then by the time I went to college, I moved there too. Through my high school I lived with my family that had been here, but my dad moved on ahead of me to the apartment.

Reich: Do you remember any discussions in your uncle’s house about what was going on in Europe during your high school years? During your time at Franklin?
LABBY: Not particularly. I’m sure there were many, I just don’t recall them. I think it was more about family – who had gone where and whom they knew to be alive and that sort of thing. I remember there was a newspaper called the Aufbau which came. It was a German-Jewish newspaper and reading in there about who turned up where, and who had died of the people that they knew. My uncle and aunt had lived in Berlin, and my father came from Düsseldorf, so there were different communities involved. That was a big part of life, to wait for the paper every week and see who had turned up and whom they knew, and what was happening.

Reich: Is this a German newspaper?
LABBY: Yes. German-Jewish.

Reich: Was it from Düsseldorf?
LABBY: Oh, no. It was published in the United States, out in New York.

Reich: So it told you about family members that were in the United States, or people that you might know.
LABBY: Yes. There were articles and there were always announcements of people. You could look and see if you saw anybody you knew. And of course, death notices or engagements or weddings, whatever happened in the German-Jewish communities found its way to this paper. That was very important. And there were quite a few Jewish immigrants that came to Portland. German Jews at that time. Some had come earlier; some came later via Shanghai. They had a club here. I don’t know just exactly when it was formed.

Reich: It was a German-Jewish club in Portland?
LABBY: Yes.

Reich: Were you involved with that when you were in high school?
LABBY: Well, I went to it with my dad, and later on with my husband a few times. I can’t think of its name at the moment. Isn’t that awful?

Reich: What grade did you go into when you first went to Franklin?
LABBY: Freshman. This was like mid-term in the winter. Then about a year later we moved and I had to transfer to Grant High School, which was northeast as opposed to southeast. Then before I was through, we moved again out to an area called Dunthorpe. I would have had to go to another high school at that point and I revolted. I took a bus into downtown Portland and a bus out to Grant High School, so I didn’t have to change one more time.

Reich: Did you start attending synagogue when you first came to Portland?
LABBY: Yes. I think my family had already joined Temple Beth Israel when they first came and that’s where I went to Sunday School, pretty much the same time that I started school here. Then graduated, it was after confirmation. So I just graduated from the high school department.

Reich: Do you have any idea if there was much awareness on the part of the Portland Jewish community about what was going on in Europe, what was discussed?
LABBY: I think they knew. I don’t think it was for us German Jewish immigrants as comfortable a place to be as was Franklin High School. It’s not a nice thing to say, and I don’t know why it happened, but I have talked about this with other friends of mine. They all had pretty much the same reaction. I think we were like the second or third wave of immigrants and there was an establishment there from many, many years earlier.

Reich: What went on at the meetings of the German-Jewish club? 
LABBY: I think they had a wonderful time. Having come from a horrible situation, I think they tried to be very up about their new existence and their new life. They put on plays and they had all kinds of gatherings to get reacquainted and situated. On the whole, oh I don’t know, it ran for many, many years and it involved like a couple generations. Our elders and my generation. They had a good time there were a lot of small groups of people. My father always would spend his afternoons going to something called “Mannings,” which was a restaurant. There was a table of these kindred souls who would meet and they’d sit there and have coffee. Later on they’d bring their grandchildren to it. They kind of stuck together, a lot. They didn’t all do this, not all immigrants, but a lot of them got together and joined, especially this one club.

Reich: I’m curious (and maybe you don’t have a recollection of it) but did there seem to be much mobilization on the part of the Portland Jewish community to continue to bring Jewish immigrants from Europe? 
LABBY: Not that I’m aware of. I think there were many individuals who sponsored people and even people they didn’t know. I think there was quite a bit of that in Portland. I don’t know that it was on an organized level. I’m not aware of it. Maybe as you talk to other people you find out the things I don’t know. But there were a lot of people in Portland who had contacts and did provide visas for other people. A lot of it was family. One member would vouch for the next one and they brought various members of their own families over. Some of them were not necessarily closely related, but very distantly related and would provide visas. I don’t know what particular organization. I could look into who did that. I think there were probably members of groups like B’nai Brith who provided visas as a group or just on an individual basis. It seems that there ended up a great number of people here, really, considering how far west it was.

Reich: Do you remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
LABBY: Oh, yes.

Reich: What do you remember about that?
LABBY: Well, I think I remember it as I read it in the paper and heard it on the radio. Just like everybody else did. I don’t think I was aware of the many ramifications or the things that had gone on before, but it certainly was of major impact.

Reich: Shortly thereafter, Germany declared war on the United States. Do you remember that?
LABBY: I know when we joined the war. By the time I got to college, of course, a lot of the young men had enlisted or had been drafted. Then I was there when they came back, still in school. They began to go to school on the G.I. Bill. This was in college.

Reich: When did you finish high school?
LABBY: ’43.

Reich: And you went to Reed College?
LABBY: Then I went to Reed.

Reich: Right after high school?
LABBY: Yes.

Reich: Did your father have a means of support? Did he work during this time?
LABBY: He worked, but I earned most of my own college money in the summers. I didn’t have to pay for my own living expenses or anything. I lived at home while I went to Reed. Then in my junior year I happened to get a scholarship to Mills College, for the summer, just to go to a French school there. Then when I came back, I finished my senior year at Lewis and Clark, so I didn’t graduate from Reed; I graduated from Lewis and Clark. I think that was the only year that I didn’t work in the summer because I had been away at school. I think my family paid for my tuition my senior year. But I worked during the war in the shipyard for two summers in offices, so I was able to save money. As I said, I didn’t have to pay for anything except my schooling. I didn’t have room and board to pay, or anything like that.

Reich: Can you tell me about after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the acceleration of the war effort in Portland? It sounds like you worked as part of the war effort?
LABBY: Yes.

Reich: How did that happen in the media at the time? How did you get involved in it? [What] do you remember about it?
LABBY: No, but we thought ourselves American at that point, and this was our country that was attacked. The switch had been made for me, somewhere way back and it was all a horrible thing that happened. The Japanese then were terrible and you got into this whole thing. It was very important. People I knew were going to war. I was older by then. It was very much a part of our lives.

Reich: Did you feel like you were part of the war personally?
LABBY: Yes, oh yes. We would buy bonds when we could and that sort of thing. Oh yes, it was very much. I think we had assimilated to the point where this was our concern, too.

Reich: How did you feel about the internment of the Japanese population here?
LABBY: At that time? I don’t think I ever approved. I don’t think I ever saw the danger, their endangering us, anymore than the Germans who were here. The Germans here that I knew were Jewish, and they certainly weren’t going to threaten the country that had helped them. I didn’t really personally know any Japanese people at that time, but it seemed an unnecessary thing then even.

Reich: When do you remember first becoming aware of the breadth of the Holocaust, when did you first hear about Auschwitz and the rest of the camps? When did you become aware of the magnitude?
LABBY: Well, I think much, much later when I was in this country. I knew there was terror out there and horror, but it didn’t have a name or a location that I knew about. Just the fear that everyone had and the desperate struggle to get out was more of what I was aware of as a child. Much later you began to hear the size of it, and all the other things that had happened that were outside of my realm of even cognizance at that point. 

Reich: Did you become aware of the Holocaust before the war was over or after ’45?
LABBY: I think probably after the whole extent of it. I remember reading an article in a magazine that described a train that the Jews had been put on to be taken to a camp. I think that was the first really graphic description of something, and it stuck with me all my life. It was in one of these This Week magazines that comes in the paper. That was really my first reading of anything in detail that was so horrible that I never forgot it. Until then, everything had been vague and not into specifics.

Reich: Had you maintained contact with your cousins and uncles and aunts after you came to the United States?
LABBY: Some of them, yes. The ones in Brazil, the contact was maintained by my father. It wasn’t until my uncle and my aunt were all gone that we began to (my cousin and I) do some of this. It’s just a continuation.

Reich: How did you find out about your relatives who had perished?
LABBY: Well, the fact that we never found them, or could find them. They never turned up. We don’t know where they went, where they were killed, or anything other than they didn’t survive.

Reich: You were never in contact with those relatives after you came to the United States? 
LABBY: I think my father was for a while. There were some people who had helped him who were not Jewish that he after the war sent packages to with food, time and again to thank them.

Reich: Do you have any recollection of the response of the Jewish community in Portland to the first press releases and such of the Holocaust?
LABBY: Do I have any recollection of what the community reacted like?

Reich: Yes. Just the Jewish community. How did the Jewish community in Portland respond to the information?
LABBY: Oh, boy, I don’t think I would know. I wasn’t probably that involved in a Jewish community situation. I went to Sunday School and other than that, I went to school.

Reich: You graduated from Lewis and Clark in?
LABBY: 1947. 

Reich: And then what happened?
LABBY: I began to work. I majored in sociology, and I went to work as a social worker for the state of Oregon, in Clackamas County, Oregon City. I worked probably a couple years and then I was married in 1948.

Reich: How did you meet your husband?
LABBY: I met him at a party that I gave for some other friends who were getting married, and he crashed [laughter]. He came with another sort of shirt-tail cousin of ours and that’s how I met him. He had been a soldier.

Reich: In the US?
LABBY: Oh, yes. He was born in Portland, Oregon; a native son. He had been in the ski troops in Italy and the Aleutians and all. Anyway, we were married in 1948, and I was working in Oregon City. 

Reich: Is he Jewish?
LABBY: Oh, yes. His grandfather, well they came from Russia, and even his father was born in Russia and came as a young person. There’s quite a few Labbys around, and they’re all related. All the ones that spell their name with a “y” anyway.

Reich: And you have children?
LABBY: Yes, we have two boys. 

Reich: What are their names?
LABBY: Paul and Larry Labby.

Reich: What’s your husband’s name?
LABBY: Robert, or Bob. There was another, his uncle was a Bob Labby, too. Anyhow, there are lots of them around.

Reich: Do your children live in Portland?
LABBY: I have one son who lives in Portland and one who lives near Mt. Hood. The Portland one is married, has two little boys, and they live walking distance from our house. That’s nice. 

Reich: Have your children, or you and your husband been involved in a synagogue or in Jewish community?
LABBY: We’ve been members of Temple Beth Israel as long as I can remember, and our children went to Sunday School there, but they’re not active, either one of them, at all. We still belong.

Reich: Well, I would like to conclude my questions with a couple things. One is any reflections that you have about your experience in Germany and about the Holocaust. And two would be, based on those reflections, kind of a message you might have for anyone who might watch this tape. For future generations.
LABBY: Well, that’s quite a question!

Reich: [inaudible]
LABBY: I don’t know that I’m up to it really. But the sad thing is I was thinking this morning that having gone through a little of what many people went through so much more, and having seen antisemitism become so public and rise and all, and having seen the great fight to end it all, and having now seen it begin to rise again, doesn’t give me a whole lot of positive feeling, or faith in humanity. 

When you think back of all the few thousand years that we have fought wars in the name of religion, I don’t think we’re much ahead today when you see what’s going on in the world everywhere, including the rise of neo-Nazis and antisemitism and anti-this. 

You look around and they’re fighting everywhere about some form of religion. It’s not a very positive outlook. I consider myself extremely fortunate having come out of a situation and having had a very good life and not seeing a great deal of improvement ahead for my grandchildren. I wonder if the same struggle will occur for them and how they will be able to cope. I’m in the admiration of all the people my father’s age who were in their 50s when they left one life and started over and did menial work and adjusted, and you wonder if our children would be able to do that if they need to, and I hope not.

Reich: Did your father ever reflect or discuss what had gone on in Germany and what his participation had been?
LABBY: No, unfortunately not, and I never asked him. But most of my contemporary friends who are of same or similar background, none of them discussed it with their parents. I think the parents didn’t want to talk about it; the children didn’t know enough to ask or even were thinking about it in those years when they were able to ask their parents about things that had gone on. I think maybe some people did, but the majority of us never did. I don’t think I’ve discussed much with my children, and I don’t know if it’s because they’re boys and maybe their interests are elsewhere. I think as time goes on, maybe, I will talk to them a little more about it, but it just isn’t easy. And they, too, have not asked much.

Harper: So the words of wisdom for future generations based on your experience?
LABBY: Look out [laughs]. Do what you can, which is sort of why I’m doing this. I don’t know that it will make any inroads for people to be able to prove that the Holocaust did exist or not. In the mail yesterday already there was some discussion about the things that are happening in Europe now where they have video games the children can play where they win points for hurting Jews. It’s incredible how far we’re already down the wrong path again. I guess each generation fights its own battles, wherever they may occur.

Reich: You feel it’s an ongoing battle?
LABBY: I think so. And I think the only thing that we’ve learned is that it’s not good to be quiet and not say your peace while you can, because I think that’s what happened in many cases. People, Jewish people in Germany, did not believe it could happen that they would become a target like this because they had taken an active part in the civilization at the time. They had fought the wars, contributed to society. So we learn, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.

Reich [to Harper] Any other questions?
Harper: Thank you.

Reich: Thank you very much.
LABBY: You’re welcome.

[Silence as Labby gathers photographs to explain]

LABBY: This is the private Jewish school I attended and this is my class. This was the man who organized it and ran it. He just passed away a year or so ago. His name was Dr. Hertz. This was one of my teachers, his name was Kurt Burgell. He became a professor at a college in California and is still alive in his 80s. And that’s me. 

And let’s see, this is now a lady who lives in Brussels named Lutta. Her name was Heineman, and I’m in correspondence. This young man has written. I don’t know. Some of them, of course, have perished. One of them has written a book. I know this young man was killed. Let’s see, where is she? This girl was killed, I know. This woman lives in the United States, and I’ve heard from her, and that’s about all I can tell you.

This is a picture of my first year in a public school in Düsseldorf, Oberkassel. The school that I had to leave to go to a private school. That’s me. This is the house that I grew up in, and it, for some reason, is still standing.