Marion Walter

Shiffman: Marion, would you state please your full name, date and place of birth, where you live now, and how long you have been living here?
WALTER: It’s Marion Walter, and I was born on July 30, 1928. I live in Eugene, Oregon, which I still don’t say correctly, and I came here in the fall of 1977.

Shiffman: And you were born where?
WALTER: I was born in Berlin.

Shiffman: Would you like to tell me about your early childhood? Everything that you can remember. Whether or not you had siblings, whether your grandparents lived in the same city or in the same area, how close you were… Whatever you remember.
WALTER: I was born in Berlin, but my memory of my early childhood is very, very poor. I read somewhere – and I think it’s so true – that you remember the things that happened under emotional situations, which might account for the fact that almost all of my early memories are disasters like falling off my wickel commode (the changing table), my sister getting burned by an electric frying pan, and all bad things. I have very, very little memory about the early years. I can remember holidays on the beach in Northern Germany and playing in the sand, but to tell you the truth I cannot remember a single conversation with my parents until… I can remember the night before we left for England. I don’t remember sort of doing things with them very much, but I remember the school and I would like to talk a little bit about school, but I can come back to that in a minute.

You asked about relatives. I had a grandmother on my mother’s side. My father’s grandparents had died, but he had a brother whom I knew and liked. I had a grandmother on my mother’s side and a great-grandmother on my mother’s side, and I can remember that my great-grandmother died. She must have died just the year I went to school because in Germany when you went to school you got a schul tüte, which meant a schoolbag. It was like a big cone and was filled probably with crayons and things for school and presents. And I didn’t get a schul tüte from my great-grandmother because she died maybe a day or two before, so I remember that.

I can remember that my sister and I went to a Nazi school in Berlin, and I can talk about that later too because I went back to it in 1990 or something, when the Mayor of Berlin invited me back. People didn’t want to sit next to us. I can remember that I couldn’t be in the play. And it’s funny because I mentioned this when I went back to the school and they said that they weren’t aware of it, but I have such a vivid memory of it that it must be true.

Two things: You had to collect empty toothpaste things and things like that. Toothpaste tubes, because they were metal, and drop them off at the school door whenever you had any. But the thing I remember most was that on the bulletin board (as you came in) you had to “buy thumbtacks” and you could buy gold ones or silver ones. They cost money, and it was money for Hitler, and you had to put it in I think maybe with a little hammer or maybe with your thumb, I don’t remember, in the shape of a swastika. And I can remember that so vividly that it must be so.

Shiffman: About how old were you at that stage?
WALTER: Between six and eight. And I must have liked it because later on I liked geometry. I didn’t like the swastikas but I must have been impressed by how people put the thumbtacks in.

Shiffman: So this was probably in 1933 or 1934?
WALTER: 1934 to 1936. Yes. School time, so probably the fall of 1934 until 1936. And I know you’re going to ask me about why I studied math, and I have to tell you a story which is connected to the school and it has to do with why I studied math I think. One time I didn’t go to school because I was sick, and we had a nanny who took me to the park. I can visually remember this, but I don’t know if I remember what was said or if I remember it because my mother told the story so often, but visually I can tell you that the teacher – I was crossing into the park with my nanny – and the teacher came from the right. I always know where something happened. And I went back there in the 1990s and sure enough it was from the right. Well, my mother was called in the next day and she was asked why I had not said “Heil Hitler” to Frau Schultze. And evidently I piped up with – and this is the part I don’t know if I actually remember it – but if I was at school I had to say Heil Hitler and at home I was not allowed to say Heil Hitler, and when I met Frau Schultze in the park I didn’t know if I was at home or at school, where upon evidently Frau Schultze said at this time she wouldn’t report me because I was the best in rechnen, in arithmetic, and she didn’t want to lose me. So, if that isn’t an incentive to become good in math I don’t know what is.

What else can I remember from those days…? I trying to think of a few of the Jewish things, and I can remember once being on the street and being hustled away from the crowd because I guess troops or Hitler or somebody… you know, it wasn’t safe. And I can remember one time – it must have been a radio because you know it was voice, but as far as I remember I don’t know if radios were really that big – but I remember a big thing in the room… it must have been the radio, and it must have been the Olympics of 1936 because I can sort of remember hearing Hitler raving. There was a thing about, who was it… Americans… I can sort of remember that. And as far as Hitler is concerned I can remember – and I still have that phobia today – about not talking on the phone and not saying… I had an uncle, my mother had a brother, and don’t say where Uncle Alfred is sleeping tonight. And even now, I don’t think it’s safe to talk on the phone (laughs). And I can remember that quite exactly.

Shiffman: Can I interrupt?
WALTER: Certainly. Any time.

Shiffman: You mentioned your grandmother. And you mentioned an uncle on your father’s side.
WALTER: Yes.

Shiffman: Do you remember anything about… Did they participate in your lives at all? Do you remember any Jewishness that they kept up or any holidays or anything like that?
WALTER: I don’t know how often we saw my relatives on my father’s side – my uncle and aunt. They had two sons, my cousins, and he had a sister too. I liked the sister, my aunt on that side, and they escaped to Sweden. I don’t know… You know all the Jewishness I remember was from the Jewish boarding school. I don’t know that we went to… I don’t remember going to a synagogue, although I sort of knew vaguely where the synagogue was. I don’t think on my mother’s side… I think the Jewishness was on my father’s side, and I think my father went to synagogue but I don’t know.

Shiffman: And you don’t remember your mother lighting candles or anything like that, or your grandmother telling you stories…

WALTER: No, no. I mean I don’t think I even remember my grandmother telling me anything. I don’t know how often we saw my grandmother. I don’t think often, and I may be quite wrong, but certainly there wasn’t… And my parents got divorced, which didn’t help.

Shiffman: At this time or later?
WALTER: I’m not actually sure when exactly.

Shiffman: Before the war?
WALTER: I think when I was about six or seven, so definitely before the war, so I would think about 1935 or something like that.

Shiffman: Do you remember any talk in your home about that things were not good [and] as Jews maybe we should leave, or were any of your family leaving or any such thing?
WALTER: You know, it sounds absolutely crazy but I don’t actually remember any conversations about anything from my parents, and I don’t know whether or not I’ve just blocked it out. I do remember one thing – and this was just before we left: One evening my sister and I wanted to buy something – I think for my uncle, it was his birthday maybe or something like that – so my father gave us some money and we went on our own. That sort of surprised me because in 1938 – it must have been Christmas 1938, when I was 10 and my sister was not quite 13 – so I’m surprised that we went on our own, but I remember that very well. We went out and we did two things: One is that we went and bought whatever we wanted – a little ivory animal or something –and there were a lot of beggars in the street. You know, it was a bad time I think, and there was this beggar and he was outside of a bakery so we went in and bought some bread and rolls and gave it to him and he threw it back at us. I guess he either wanted money or he wanted a drink – or he just didn’t want anything from Jews – I don’t know, but that always has… And then, when we came home, we found that we had lost a note – you know it was all paper money – and I do remember my father saying it didn’t matter. It was better we lose it than giving it to Hitler. That I remember.

I don’t remember talking about having to leave, on the Kindertransport, but I do remember the night before we left crying and looking at a map to see where England was, and not having a clue.

Shiffman: Before you go into that, maybe you should tell me about the boarding school.
WALTER: Well, going to the Nazi school, a regular elementary school, was not possible anymore, and I don’t remember from the Nuremburg laws exactly when we actually had to leave or…. But this was a remarkable school. It was so remarkable that of the children who went there – and some of us survived – we know where we are. Almost everybody, which is amazing, and a book got written. The title is Educated Toward Spiritual Resistance and it’s a book that somebody might like to read.

Shiffman: Where was this school?
WALTER: The school was in South Germany, near Ulm, and it was in a village called Herrlingen, and that’s why the school was called Landschulheim Herrlingen. Landschulheim must mean land/school/home, but there must be a better translation for that. The village is famous, or infamous, because that’s where Rommel committed suicide. It was a group of houses in the forest. A beautiful, beautiful spot, but Rommel didn’t want to live in this house because Jews had lived in the house. Now there are plaques there saying that the school was there. There was so much history to that school because the woman who started the school, Anna Schlesinger, left the school already in 1933 and moved it to England, and there it was called New Herrlingen. And now in Ulm, I believe there are two schools named after her and a street named after her, and all kinds of memorials.

Shiffman: Please clarify this for me. You say that this woman who started the school went to England in 1933.
WALTER: Right.
Shiffman: But when you went there in around 1936 it was being run by…
WALTER: A different person.
Shiffman: I see.

WALTER: Yes. And I think the history is in one of these other books. In 1935 this man named Hugo Rosenthal (who I think should be in this museum) ran the school. He was a wonderful man. He was German, and as I said there is a whole book about his history. He had lived in Israel and came back to Germany for something and was going to go back to Israel but didn’t because somehow he was offered the job of headmaster of the school. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. He had a wife and three children: Uriel, Gabriel, and Rachael, who all went to Israel. I saw them in Israel. One of them was killed in the Yom Kippur War, unfortunately. And Hugo Rosenthal became headmaster of the school in Haifa after he left Germany finally in 1939, called Ahava, which is Love in Hebrew I believe, and there has been a lot written about that. The unfortunate thing is that I was so young that none of the philosophy or the history rubbed off on me (laughs). I was in fact the only girl in the junior part of the school. The junior part of the school was all boys, but when my parents wanted us to go there I guess they decided they’d better take me because they couldn’t separate my sister and me, so I was the only girl in the junior part and I was spoiled rotten. I mean, I was just spoiled because I was this little thing.

Shiffman: Was this a private school?
WALTER: Yes.

Shiffman: Did it cost your parents a lot of money?
WALTER: I have no idea, but it was a private school.

Shiffman: What strikes me, I’m sort of amazed that at that time there still existed a Jewish school.
WALTER: There were Jewish schools in Berlin, and some of them are famous. But Herrlingen was not only an unusual Jewish school, and I can tell you what I learned about Judaism there, but in the 1960s I worked in Boston at a place that was very innovational. You know, educational. And I would say, “But we did that in 1936.” You know, like vertical grouping of children and working together and combining subject matter. I mean the philosophy… It was an amazing school.

I did some children’s books, and in 1966 (a year before the Yom Kippur War) I had a chance to go to Israel and I landed and I went straight to visit Hugo Rosenthal, and I gave him a copy of one of the books and I wrote in it “To Hugo (in Israel his name was Jushun but I didn’t say that) and Judith, because without Herrlingen I wouldn’t have written this book.” And I am so sure of that.

Shiffman: So, tell me, how long did you spend at the school?
WALTER: I’m not sure what month we went there, but I know it was in 1936. And we left, I assume, after Kristallnacht, because we went to England in March of 1939 and the school closed in March. Kristallnacht was in November, so I would imagine that we left around Christmastime. You know, at the end of the year 1938, or maybe January of 1939. I seem to remember hearing about Kristallnacht and hearing noises and so on. You know, that was still when we were at Herrlingen.

That reminds me, I should talk about this: I always wondered how the world could say they didn’t know that the Germans were rearming, because the school had several houses right in the woods. I mean, it was in the forest. One of the things I remember was getting lost in the forest. And we didn’t have meat at the school. I don’t know how kosher it was, but we certainly didn’t have meat or sausage. The army was doing maneuvers in the forest and we used to talk to the soldiers and they used to give us sausages, and I can remember (you know, a visual memory) that there were these tanks and they had either A or B written on them. They were blue or red, and I think the A was red and the B was blue. And they were maneuvering the tanks that we as kids saw, so how could the world not have known about the armament? I saw the tanks.

And then another thing. I can remember, I don’t know what date, but historically somebody could find out, that we had to burn certain books that the school was not allowed to have because they were going to come and inspect so we had these sort of garbage bins out on the sports grounds… It was kind of a platz—place. It didn’t have grass but it was (laughs) photographed. It’s on the cover of the book. You can see. That was the big house but then there were some photographs have more of this platz, and there were garbage bins – metal garbage bins, and they were burning the books – and I can remember that we had to stir the ashes because…. And this is why I’m still phobic – because if you want to get rid of some paper and you burn it, you can still read it, so if you burn this piece of paper and you don’t squash it, the type can still be read, so we had to stir the ashes and I can remember… You know, I was little but I was one of the people who stirred the ashes. I can remember that.

And I have another memory… I had to sleep in the big house because there were no girls in the other little houses. I mean, the big house was coed, but I couldn’t sleep in the little house because I would have been the only girl. Well, we were told not to look out of the windows, but what did we do? We were children and I can remember looking and the headmaster was being taken away by the Gestapo so obviously we were told, “The Gestapo is coming don’t look out,” and again I can remember the direction he walked. Isn’t that crazy that I can remember that it was from this to the right…. It wasn’t to the left. But he was brought back. I don’t know how he got back, but that probably is in the book somewhere.

Shiffman: Do you remember if there was any talk before you went off to England? And did you go as a group or did you go individually? Did your mother go with you?
WALTER: No, no. I mean, Kindertransport was only children. I can talk a lot about the Kindertransport. I remember the night before. Again, I can see the bed and I can see the atlas, which was big. And I can remember this very well. I remember I was crying because I couldn’t speak English. I didn’t have English lessons in the school. My sister did, a little bit, but I was too young. And I tried to think of the most complicated word in German that I would never learn the English of. So I thought and thought and I said, “I’ll never learn English for Edelweiss (laughs).”

I think we were told that we had very distant relatives in England who treated us, and my father, terribly. But that’s a whole other story that I may not want to say much about. I don’t remember political conversation. I mean, I remember being told not to say anything on the phone but I don’t remember any actual conversations. You know, I said that to somebody the other day and they said that in Germany in those days parents and children didn’t talk. Well, we had a nanny, but I don’t remember talking to the nanny either. I don’t remember doing anything much in Berlin.

Shiffman: Before we go on, can you tell us a little bit about your nanny? Did nanny live with you, or do you remember?
WALTER: When I was really little there was a da-da, who was more like a nurse, because I have a photograph of her. You know, she looked more like a nurse. I don’t think they lived with us.

Shiffman: Does this mean that your family was fairly well established and comfortable, that they could afford this?
WALTER: Yes. They were businessmen.

Shiffman: What sort of business?
WALTER: Well my father I think was in the bead business, which was one of the reasons I went into math, because we had lots of beads in the house. But I think it was costume jewelry and things like that. I remember once going to his office, where there were even more beads (laughs) and so I often wondered actually because I must have (and I sort of remember) threading beads, and that must have been very good for math. In math my favorite topic is symmetry, and maybe I made beads with two reds and two blues and then two reds (laughs).

My parents still got out just before the war, and I was amongst the lucky 15% who saw their parents again of former Kindertransport. There were over 10,000 children, and about 15% were lucky.

Never once did I, or my sister, ask my mother (when we were in England or after the war) any questions. Not one question about how was it to see us go on the Kindertransport, or when did you know that you could get out or how did you get out? Not one question. And I never talked with my sister about whether or not she remembered our journey, or do you remember this or do you remember that? Then, in 1999 there was a Kindertransport reunion. Bertha Leverton arranged that in London, and I happened to be in London so at the last minute I went to it and there were many talks. The most moving by the way was given by Lord David Attenborough. That was the most moving part almost of the meeting because his parents took in some children like us and he talked about that, and I have that. You know, it’s on tape and I think it’s in one of the films. It is so moving it gives me goose pimples.

Anyway, at that Kindertransport meeting there were talks and then there were sessions. I went to one of the sessions that was called Intergenerational Communication since I have two nieces, so I thought I’d go to that. Well, there was a man, and he stood there and he said, “Oh, I’ve told my daughter all about it. You know, we’ve talked about it.” And the daughter was standing next to him and said, “But Daddy, you didn’t.” And that was the most common reaction – everybody saying they’d never talked to their parents about it, and since then the stopper is out of the bottle and everybody is talking about it – to the point…

I was just talking to somebody the other day… And somebody, perhaps on the bus, would ask me where I was from, and I used to say England because my accent used to be totally British and I could get away with it, but now 60% of the people hear something else, or German, and I don’t want to say Germany because then so often people say, “Oh, how nice, have you been back? Why don’t you go back?” And so I never know what to say. Now, if I get asked, I sometimes ask if they know about the Kindertransport, and if they do then I tell them that’s how I came to England. And if they don’t then I give them a history lesson (laughs).

But you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago they had their annual meetings, but I’ve only gone to the one… There was one reunion in San Francisco a few years ago and I went to that one. I also went to the one in Scottsdale, Arizona, when Into the Arms of Strangers came out and we had an early showing of that. And everybody was talking about it in 1999.

Shiffman: That’s amazing. So maybe you’d like to tell us what you remember about the Kindertransport. The actual going from Germany. About the stations…
WALTER: I can remember arriving at Anhalter Bahnhof station, the station in Berlin. And again, I can see the circle of children. There was a circle of children, with adults, all in a circle. And the strange thing is – we’ve never figured out, both my sister and I felt we knew those two girls over there – and they thought they knew us. We talked quite a bit (we were able to talk a little bit while we were waiting) but we couldn’t figure out where we had ever met and it turned out that their father and my uncle were in World War I together. But we couldn’t figure out if we had in fact ever actually met, and for a while in England we kept in touch but I don’t even remember their names now.

I do not remember, and this is crazy, but I do not remember saying goodbye to my parents. It’s just a blank. I can remember exactly where in the circle we stood, and I know that they stood on the right of me, and I can remember being on the train, but I do not remember actually saying goodbye to them.

On the train there were compartments, but slightly different from on trains now, and you were not allowed to take anything of value with you. I think we had two-mark or one-mark each, and the only thing you were allowed to take out – or I guess my mother took out because we didn’t even take that out – you were allowed to have one place setting of silver, and I still have it. That’s what I take when I’m invited to Passover, they always ask me to bring it. I remember that there was a big girl in the compartment. She must have been 16 years old. Maybe 16 was the oldest age, I don’t remember, but she was the big girl in the compartment and she told us (before we even moved) that she was engaged or that she had a boyfriend, and that he gave her a ring, and she had a gold ring. And there was this big discussion about where should she hide this gold ring. Now, if the Nazis had found it she would have been taken off the train and G-D knows what would have happened to her parents. But can you imagine her discussing this with 10-year-olds? And the consensus was that she should wear it, so she wore it, and when the Nazis came in to see what we had – to look through the luggage and ask if we had anything we shouldn’t have – I can’t imagine that we didn’t all stare at her hand, but he didn’t see it. So I remember that.

I can also remember something that everybody remembers, and that is when we got to the Dutch border – looking out for the Dutch border, and I think I already knew because we had spent holidays in Denmark – but I know at some times in my life I thought at the border there should be a stripe (laughs) so we would know that we got across the border. Now, I think I knew that from going to Denmark, but I’m not sure whether I was looking out for a stripe to go across the border, but when we crossed the border the train stopped and I remember sort of relief when the Nazis left and other people got on the train, and there were these ladies who came to the train and gave us food and I can tell you exactly – I can practically taste the food. It was called hoppel moppel, with potatoes or cabbage and meat all mushed up in a big vat, and chocolate and a fizzy drink.

The Jews in Britain at some point, in the 1990s maybe, put a plaque in the House of Commons to thank the British for having let 10,000 children come in, but the Dutch somehow never got thanked. We thanked the British but we never thanked the Dutch, and yet at every Kindertransport reunion everybody I talk to can remember what happed when we crossed the border and everybody had something different to eat and so on (different Kindertransports got different food), so I thought it was a bright idea to put plaques up in Holland at the train stations to commemorate and thank the Dutch for (I get teary-eyed) for having brought us food and so on. But there were people who objected to that because from the same train stations were trains that went in the opposite direction to the camps, so I couldn’t do that.

In 2005 I spent hour and hours and hours, I don’t know why it took me so long, writing to every Kindertransport person I could think of – and in fact at the meeting announcing it, that I would like anybody who could remember what the experience was like to write a letter – and here’s a copy of all of the letters. Then it took me even maybe 50 or more email messages to try to find out what to do with them, and finally I found out that NIOD (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation) has archived them. I have an extra copy and thought that maybe it would be nice to have it in the Oregon Jewish Museum because nobody but nobody knows they are there. So I would like to give you that.

Shiffman: Great. Thank you.
WALTER: I’m not quite sure about some of the addresses of the people on there, and I don’t remember but I think I may have asked at the time if it was okay to have your address on there, but maybe they want to… I didn’t put my address on the letter but some of the letters have the addresses of the people and I don’t know if they should be blocked out.

Shiffman: Okay. We can take care of that.
WALTER: I can remember the journey, and I remember that we must have stopped off at Rotterdam because one of the girls in the compartment was meeting a relative there and stuff like that. And then we arrived at the Hook of Holland and then we got on a boat. How much geography I knew at the time – that there would be a boat, and that there was a channel – I have no idea, but it was a very rough crossing and we were all seasick. And I can see it – my uncle had given me a little alarm clock, I could draw it for you because I know exactly what color it was – I took it out and I put it on the bunk by my bed and the ship lurched and it went into smithereens, so that set me off. You know, that was not good. We had food on the ship, and we had black tea, and none of us had ever had black tea. It was revolting (laughs) that they didn’t think not to give children black tea.

And then we got to the other side and then again it was stupid in a way. There were officials at Harwich, but they had uniforms on so I was very scared, but then we were hustled on to a train and I can again see the sandwich on each seat of the train – there was a bag with a sandwich and a banana. I loved bananas. Maybe I loved bananas before (laughs), but that was nice that there was a sandwich and a banana. And then we arrived at a station. I don’t think I knew Harwich, London… You know the distance, or anything about the geography, but we arrived at the train station in London and it’s interesting… We were at the Liverpool Street Station and only recently have they put a memorial up in the Liverpool Street Station – and I have photographs of it, I can show you – called Hope Square, and it shows some children with suitcases and stuff like that.

I also belong to the Association of Jewish Refugees in England, so I get their Kindertransport newsletter as well, they had a questionnaire because they said somebody is trying to make a play to be performed at Liverpool Street Station about the Kindertransport and if there was anything I remembered such as what I wore, what I ate, what I saw, who I talked to – anything I can remember. Well, I remember very little, but I did answer it, and they have videotaped the play and the people who answered the questionnaire are going to get a CD or a DVD of the play, so that will be interesting.

All I know is that we were picked up by these distant relatives and again, nobody warned us that the cars went on the wrong side of the street so I was petrified. Maybe that’s why I don’t drive (laughs). And we were taken to a police station, and nobody who is an adult now knows why we were taken to a police station, but I can remember that we were taken to a police station because we went up some stairs and every time we got to another flight of stairs the door sort of banged behind us. Obviously it was secure, but that was very frightening. And then this lady picked us up and I hated it because we spent the night at their house and I seem to remember having to sleep in the same bed either with my sister or with her, and the next day we were taken off to boarding school. So, that tells you a little bit about what they were like.

And I can tell you a lot about the British boarding school, but I want to tell you something more about the Jewishness of the school. Can we go back to that?

Shiffman: Sure.
WALTER: I want to go back to Herrlingen. I don’t remember the actual classes, but I do remember that we had to do everything in the school. Like, in the morning you had your job which rotated. You had to either do the stairs or you had to sweep the room. You each had a job. Well, I won’t name the school but when I see this certain school out here where somebody is cleaning up the mess around the school, I wonder why aren’t the students doing it. We did it.

I don’t remember any classes at all, except I do remember there was vertical grouping and there were some things we did with older children. It wasn’t sort of classrooms, but there was really something that really at one point I talked to Paul Olum about, suggesting that the university should do this: Every year for one week all the classes – everything – stopped, and there was one topic that everybody worked on, and I thought wouldn’t it be great if all classes would stop and we would work for one week at the university on peace or on economics or on energy, or on something, but that never happened. I can tell you how powerful those weeks were because they are the only thing I remember. The topic on the first week was grain. Every bit was about grain. And the reason I can remember this, and this gives me goose pimples. The British Association of Teachers in Mathematics was going to put out an issue on roots – you know, people’s backgrounds and why did they study math – and I said No, no, I wasn’t going to do that, but they urged me so many times that in the end I did it. And in there I talk about this week of grain because I can remember the room – again, I can remember where I sat in the room – and they didn’t have overhead projectors but they had something… I think it was like a flashlight and you pulled something through so it projected, and I was so impressed because they had pie charts about the different grains. You know, so many oats and so much wheat and so on, and I can remember that. But what gives me goose pimples is that about three days after the issue came, in which that was in, I got the book about the school in Herrlingen, and in there are copies of the newspapers that the children wrote at that time and there was the Week of the Grain and there was the pie chart.

We must have been there from 1936-1938, but I only remember two years of this particular week, and the next year it was birds. And I had the nightingale, and I had to present something about the nightingale, and maybe that’s why I love my birds so much. I think that was very important.

I can also remember a class where we did a lot of handicrafts. And I remember learning bookbinding and doing all kinds of things, but also…. We learned Hebrew there.

I can read Hebrew. Not well, but I can still read it. And that’s where I learned all about the Jewish traditions. We kept all the Jewish holidays and I can remember that every Friday night we had a tablecloth. I think maybe the other days we didn’t have a tablecloth, and I’m sure we lit candles and so on.

I was so spoiled rotten because very often on a Friday night I sat at the table with the headmaster and the headmistress, and also for Chanukah – I’m not exactly sure, but I think there was a list made (and there is a little bit about this in the book) – that you said who you would make a present for but nobody said whose present came from whom. But, again, I was spoiled rotten, and at least once the gym teacher… Everybody had a crush on the gym teacher, but he spoiled me rotten, and he was a dentist who couldn’t practice dentistry, but he became a dentist in New York and he was my dentist in New York (laughs) when I came to New York. But he made for me once for one Chanukah a box where I could keep my needles and thread and so on. He also made my sister’s wedding ring when we were all in New York.

The other thing was, which has affected me a lot, that if you got candy or if you got anything sent – and my father I think spoiled us rotten by sending us candy and sending us stuff, but anybody who got anything sent… By the way there were a lot of poor people at the school too, because there was an orphanage or something nearby so there was a range of people from all kinds of… But whenever you got a parcel and you couldn’t undo it by yourself some older student came – and I’ve forgotten what the fraction was, but I think one-fifth – that you had to give to them. And then on Saturday night all the stuff that had been collected from everybody was then shared. I think that was wonderful.

The other thing is – and I can read it to you from the journal, but it might not be interesting for the people in Portland – but in this book there is a thing about, again from the newspaper at that time (somebody must have saved all the newspapers) – there is a thing about Chanukah week. And then it talks about dreidel. It doesn’t have it in the English edition, but in the German edition… I was called Mohren Kopf, which means moor head, because I had so much hair. Mohren Kopf had a special way of dreidel and I should really get the German book out and translate it… How I would pretend that I was praying hard and move forwards and backwards, and say, “Abracadabra, barukh at-tah Adonai eloheinu melekh haolam, da da da… ham-mo-tsi gimmel” (laughs). And I would do this and I would do this, and I can remember that I won all the nuts and I had to take them to my room, and I had to put them in my skirt because I had so many nuts. And then it said, “From then on, everybody did the dreidel that way” and I can translate that. So that’s in there (only in the German edition, not in the English translation).

I can remember, particularly Sukkot, because one of the boys played the flute. I think I wasn’t quite in the sukkah, I was sort of on the edge. Again, isn’t it funny that I can remember on which side of the succah, but I can remember almost nothing verbally….

I can remember, what is it… Havdalah? I was fascinated by the candle. I can remember that. And I can remember the Friday evenings, and I love it when Temple Beth Israel has the tune for Lecha Dodi that we sang there. And I don’t like it to any other tune (laughs).

The other thing is that there is an artist named Richard Lieberman. It’s not clear how related he was to Max Lieberman, but I think cousins. He was deaf and dumb, and he taught at the school, and my father had me and my sister painted by him. I don’t know what happened to the paintings, but they probably got destroyed. And there is a picture in the book of the painting and me, I will show it to you in a minute, of me being painted by him. Unfortunately, it says, “Leo Kahn is painting Marion Walter,” but that was not the name of the artist. And I know that I am right because a few years ago the Edwin Schorff Museum, in Neu-Ulm ,wrote to me about our names and where we are in the book so they could find people – and asked if I remembered anything about Richard Lieberman at the school, because they had an exhibition of his paintings in Ulm because he was Jewish, and in the end (and, as I said, because he was deaf and dumb but he taught at the school) he converted to Catholicism hopefully to escape (but he was sent to Auschwitz anyway although died in 1966). And they had an exhibition, and it was called Spuren Suche: Richard Lieberman. It was somehow philosophical thoughts… I don’t know the exact translation. I wrote them back and said that I didn’t remember the lessons, although I have since then found a picture of him teaching in the classroom and I was very disappointed because he had drawn something on the board that we were to copy and that is not my idea of learning art. But anyway, I told them that I had a photograph of him and me sitting there, and the painting, and it is (as you can tell) it is his artwork. So, they asked if they could put my letter and the photograph in the exhibition, and I said, “Yes, if I can write you another letter without my address on it.” So, I wrote another letter and they said they would keep it.

Shiffman: Maybe we should continue now talking about the time that you remember in England.
WALTER: All right. As I said, we arrived in the Kindertransport and the next day we were taken to an English boarding school on the South Coast, and first we had to go to shop to get the uniforms. If you saw the film The Bells of St. Trinian’s, it was exactly like that. I should add it was a lot like – what is everybody reading now, Harry Potter? – I saw a bit of the film and I wondered what the fuss was about because it was exactly like that.

We went to boarding school. Couldn’t speak a word of English. The headmistress could speak some German. My sister and I were kept separate as much as possible so we would not speak German. I think we were the two refugee children and that the girls, on the whole, tried to be nice. We slept in big dormitories and the difficulty was that the beds in England were made differently from the beds in Germany so that was a big problem.

Shiffman: May I interrupt?
WALTER: Yes. Any time.

Shiffman: You say you went to boarding school. Did a lot of the children from the Kindertransport go to boarding school?
WALTER: That’s a very good question. No. Many of the children who were on the Kindertransport did not know where they were going. And if you watch the film Into the Arms of Strangers many children were kept at what was called Dover Camp, and people would come and pick them so to speak, or they would go live in a family and not be very happy. In that respect, we were lucky. We knew exactly where we were going.

Shiffman: So how come you went there?
WALTER: Well, I don’t know what my parents arranged with these people, but they obviously guaranteed for us… In order to get on the Kindertransport you had to have somebody guaranteeing for you. Or maybe not. But anyway, somehow they arranged with my parents that they would look after us, because my parents didn’t know if they would get out or not…

Shiffman: You mean that the cousins would look after you?
WALTER: They were not cousins, but yes.

Shiffman: So, do you think they organized for you to go to the boarding school?
WALTER: Probably, yes. Or they must have discussed it with my parents I would imagine.

Shiffman: Do you think that they were paying for it, or do you think your parents…
WALTER: That’s a story. Yes. The boarding school was on the South Coast, and I mention that because when the war started they expected the invasion to be there in 1940, and then all the schools had to clear out and evacuate. In fact, we had to evacuate to three different places one after the other for various reasons. The school was not a Jewish school. It was Church of England run of course, and we did have to go to prayers, and when the other girls went to church – at the school, and also when we were evacuated – we didn’t go to church obviously, and guess what we had to do instead. We had to clean everybody’s indoor shoes. We had indoor shoes and outdoor shoes, and since they were out with the outdoor shoes we had to clean everybody’s indoor shoes. I’m very good at cleaning shoes (laughs).

Then once we were evacuated – or even maybe then – we had to take the dog for a walk. And we did go to the prayers, and I loved all the carols.

It must have been the Association of Jewish Refugees in London, or some such organization, maybe Woburn House, that kept track of us. They kept track of us by sending us greetings on Jewish holidays and we had religious lessons by correspondence, and I know I had them from Rabbi Pfingst. I’m sure I was a very bad student because we had a book and we had questions, and it was very easy to put the answers down for the questions if you had the book in front of you, so I was not a very good student, but it kept the Hebrew up. And we got the Happy New Year kind of letters. And not so many, many years ago – I don’t know how I found out about it, maybe by sending a certain amount of money to somewhere in London – we could get the reports, so obviously I don’t know whether or not they were social workers, but people kept track of us as to where we were living. And especially my sister, those distant relatives at the age of 14 (that was the school-leaving age) thought my sister should leave school. We had evacuated to a place where they bred Cocker Spaniels, and they thought she should learn how to look after dogs. And there were complete strangers there who said that was ridiculous, that she was a very bright girl, and they sent her back to the local boarding school. This was in Oswestry. She had to bicycle eight miles to get to the school every day.

Shiffman: So at that stage you were separated?
WALTER: Yes, because she had to leave school. But the social workers kept track. I mean, I have those records of how we were and how… But we had no idea at that time that anybody was keeping track of us. And they must have done that with all of the children.

Shiffman: Right. Do you know where your parents were at that time?
WALTER: My parents got out before the war. Just before the war.

Shiffman: And where did they go?
WALTER: My mother went to London, and it’s crazy the amount of money that you were allowed to take out was not enough money to pay the train fare from Harwich to London, but she had some friends. My mother went to London, and I suppose my father went to London with her, but the day war was declared we were in Brighton and Hove, on the South Coast, maybe because my aunt had gotten there. But my father was interned. All of the men were interned who came over because the British couldn’t decide who was a spy and who was real, so he was interned and sent to the Isle of Man. And my cousin was shipped to Canada and was in a camp there. The younger people – if you were 18 or younger, I think – lived on the South Coast, otherwise you were deported. So my father was sent to the Isle of Man and then probably in late 1939 or 1940, I’m not exactly sure when he came out, but he became ill and he died in 1943.

Shiffman: Your father?
WALTER: Yes.

Shiffman: So, he never came to the States with you?
WALTER: No, no.

Shiffman: I see. Okay.
WALTER: So the correspondence lessons – that was the only Jewish contact until my father died. And when my father died… I don’t know why, or how it came about, but the West London Synagogue got in contact, the rabbi there… Oh, I was bat mitzvahed, although we called it confirmed, at the West London Synagogue and I don’t remember exactly what year but in must have been around 1942. I’m not sure, because the war was still on. But the thing is that when my father died the synagogue… No. I got bat mitzvahed after my father died I think. But anyway, we got to know the rabbi that way, and I really have got to go to the Portland Museum because the rabbi was American so some Americans might know of him. His name was Harold Reinhart, and he was really fabulous to my mother and me. I’m trying to think of his wife’s name, who was also… it was Flora. Anyway, they were both just very nice people, and they said to my mother – because he was American, you know – that England may not be a good place after the war to bring up children to live and that she should get her visa quota numbers for America, and it might take years before they come up and even if you don’t want to go it wouldn’t matter because you could just let them go, but if you want to go you don’t want to wait another five years. And my mother’s brother, my uncle, had escaped I believe on foot from Germany to Spain and then to Cuba and then to New York. After the war he was in New York.

The other person who we were in touch with in London, who was Jewish, was one of the teachers from Herrlingen, Dr. Schreiber, and he was very kind and helpful in many ways. He taught my sister by correspondence. I have some of those letters.

So in 1947, after the war, we got notice that our numbers had come up. My sister and I didn’t even want to go. We were just settling in England.

Shiffman: So at this stage you had finished school.
WALTER: Well, what happed was… Let’s go back. The war was on and the third place we evacuated to was a beautiful, beautiful place. There were big private homes and big buildings that had to have a school, the army or a hospital or something war related. And that’s why we had to move several times, because maybe it was wanted for something else. Anyway, the third place we ended up was beautiful. And in England age 16 was school-leaving age, the age where you took school certificate. You could leave school at age 14, but 16 was the age you took your final exams. So, at Christmastime I took my final exams and… I have to say this. My sister, who was made to leave school to work with these dogs who were being bred, those people were very nice to her, and that’s where I went for my holiday because I had nowhere to go for holidays because my father had died and my mother lived in London, and [we wouldn’t go back to London because of the bombs], so I would go for holidays to this place that was totally in the country. The place is mentioned in the doomsday book, the building. There were no children. There was nobody around. The nearest place you could buy a stamp was two miles away. I think there was a bus on Wednesdays and Saturdays to Shrewsbury, but anyway my sister lived there and so I went there for the holidays. At Christmastime I left school and went there, and the headmistress called and asked if I had decided what to do. And I said, “No, I haven’t yet.” And she said that the math teacher gave notice and left, and there was no way they could get a math teacher. It was the middle of the war and in the middle of the country, and there was a teacher shortage, and she asked if I would come back and teach math. So, at the age of 16, without any training whatsoever, I went back and taught. I would get 10 shillings a week pay, and I could use the staff room, but I would have to sleep with the senior girls in the dormitory. I did that for two terms and it was quite an adventure. Then the war ended and the headmistress asked me what I was going to do. Well, I liked art and there was a job going from the government where you had to be good at math and like art or be good at art and like math, I have forgotten which, and I felt that was the ideal job for me because I liked both but I couldn’t get that job because I wasn’t a citizen. Then the headmistress suggested something else, this or that, but I said I’d rather teach than do that and she said I’d have to go to college to teach, but I really didn’t know what college was.

College was free until you were 18, that was the first thing. And my sister, who had been trained at this other school to do secretarial work, had gotten a secretarial job. I was always the lucky one. She was the one who had to do the work, so when she came to London she actually worked for the World Jewish Congress, and I have a photograph of the World Jewish Congress in some year in New York, which I don’t know what to do with and somebody might be interested. So I went to college … And my mother had all kinds of jobs ….

Visas came out and we didn’t want to go, but my mother wanted to go because her brother was there and so on. The next problem was you couldn’t get a boat, but the New Amsterdam was just put into service – it was refitted from the war – so suddenly there was this ship with no passengers. We came in January of 1948 to New York.

Shiffman: So that meant you had to leave school?
WALTER: The London school?
Shiffman: Yes.
WALTER: Well, this is the amazing thing: We knew somebody in London who knew somebody in New York. The term was just about to begin. Guess what it cost to go to Hunter College in January of 1948.

Shiffman: I have no idea.
WALTER: It was $10.00 a semester.

Shiffman: So you got into Hunter College?
WALTER: Yes. It was past registration but because we knew this person who knew this professor who knew the Dean, somehow I got in. We arrived on January 9th and I was going to Hunter whenever the term started, maybe the next week. And my sister went at night, and she continued having the job with the World Jewish Congress. My mother had a job. For a while she worked as a shop assistant and in the end she worked for.. She couldn’t get a secretarial job because she didn’t have American experience, but then the American Civil Liberties Union gave her a summer job and the person didn’t return, so she worked for years in the membership department, and then for the Swiss Benevolent Society.

Shiffman: Let’s talk about when you came to New York. You were at Hunter College, and your sister was at college at night. Where were you living?

WALTER: At first my uncle had found some kind of boarding house, which was horrible because we had just one bedroom and one living room, and my mother slept in the living room and my sister, and I slept in the bedroom. It was very hard to get an apartment, but eventually we got an apartment.

Shiffman: The three of you?
WALTER: Yes.

Shiffman: And you lived comfortably, the three of you, or was it difficult not having…
WALTER: Again, my sister and I shared a room and…

Shiffman: I’m talking about that you’d been away from your mother…
WALTER: It was difficult because we didn’t have… You know, I was 20 and we had no privacy, and I think that my sister felt that more than I did. I envy all these kids here who have three children and they have three bedrooms. I mean, I didn’t have my own bedroom until I left home.

Shiffman: After that did you have any Jewish experiences?
WALTER: I went to Temple Emanuel sometimes, but I don’t think I was a member.

Shiffman: But it was always part of your life? I mean, it’s interesting that, even as a young girl living in New York, you went to Temple Emanuel.
WALTER: Yes, but not regularly. And I don’t know why Temple Emanuel, because we lived on the West Side.

Shiffman: Are there any other things that you remember about when you were at Hunter College? You finished at Hunter College and then what?
WALTER: I tutored my way through.

Shiffman: Did you tutor only math?
WALTER: Yes. I mean it was amazing because I always felt that I tutored the same thing. You know, maybe three hours a night, but it was kids from the same school maybe living one block away, and I thought why don’t they get together and I could tutor all of them.

I don’t remember anything about Jewish or not Jewish at Hunter, although the friends I made were Jewish. I can’t explain that, but it’s so.

I took education as well as math so that I could get a teacher’s license, and I was told I would never pass my speech exam because I had a strong English accent. The only course I failed at Hunter was speech. And in order to get a teacher’s license you had to pass a speech exam amongst other things – a math exam, an English exam, all kinds of exams – and Hunter sort of got me ready for all of these tests but they said I’d never pass my speech exam, not with that accent. In those days we had too many teachers, and one way to get rid of prospective teachers was to fail them on the speech exam. And in the speech course we were told so often not to say Long Island, which never occurred to me in the first place, and they said that maybe if you have two examiners you’ll pass the speech exam.

My first teaching job was at Hunter College High School, where I student taught. You couldn’t get a permanent job unless you got a master’s degree. And then I taught a year at George Washington High School, which was in Harlem, and which I don’t think exists anymore.

I went to evening classes at NYU, and the professor thought I was always tired when I came to class and asked me to work for him because I had drawn beautiful diagrams (laughs) and he thought that would be a good idea since I couldn’t get a permanent teaching job, so I worked at NYU computing for a while. Then I thought if I could teach the most advanced course in high school, why can’t I teach the baby courses at New York University? I had been meaning to see about that for months and never did, and as luck would have it, one day (it was Friday evening) the chairman was walking through where I was working and I said, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Could I ever teach college algebra or something?” And he practically fell around my neck because it was the Friday before the Monday before the term started and they needed an instructor (laughs) and that’s how I got into college teaching. It wasn’t by design.

Shiffman: And then you got your master’s degree?
WALTER: Yes. I got my master’s degree at night, at NYU. And then one time I went to visit at Cornell….

Oh, I had a fellowship at the Bureau of Standards. They gave five fellowships and you asked at one point about discrimination against women – I never really encountered any except this one, which I think probably was to my advantage. They gave five fellowships that summer and the person interviewing came to NYU, and I had been recommended with one other… with a young man, but I didn’t turn up for the interview because it was Christmastime and the letter didn’t get to me in time, so I didn’t know about it. And so the man was waiting for me and finally he said, “Who is this M. Walter?” and the professor said, “Well, she” and he said, “She. We don’t take girls.” The professor told me they were interviewing at Princeton on Tuesday and I could go there if I wanted to but he didn’t think I had a chance, and that we would write directly to the Bureau of Standards – the Institute for Numerical Analysis in L.A. He showed me the letter. I wished I had kept it, but it started off with “Although you say you do not take women…” So anyway, I got the fellowship and I went, but I always felt well maybe I only got the fellowship because of that letter so I actually applied the next year and I got it again (laughs) the next year.

So I went to Cornell, somehow because of that, just for a weekend, and I thought that was a pleasant place for the summer. NYU was always willing to let me go in the summer because I couldn’t stand the heat when I was working there, and Cornell said they didn’t have any summer jobs, but they just happened to have a teaching fellowship returned and asked me if I wanted that teaching fellowship. And I said no, that I was at NYU, but how long do I have to think about it? And he said two weeks. And I thought I’d never been to a campus school, and I’d never been away from New York so why don’t I do it, so I did. But that was very hard because you had to teach much more than teaching fellows teach here, and I didn’t really think I wanted the PhD in math, and so after two years I left. In those days you sent out three letters for getting a job and you got three answers. Now, the poor students write 120 letters and get five answers. I wrote to Simmons College and to Northeastern University and to Temple University, and I had three offers and I took the job at Simmons, and I taught many years at Simmons. I taught at Simmons for nine years, and I also worked for the Elementary Education Development Center and developed some materials for children, which is really what I like to do also.

Shiffman: Can we talk more about that? Tell us what kind of material… Was it something special?
WALTER: Well, it’s mathematical but it’s not obviously mathematical. There were some children’s books and some work that is highly visual, with mirrors, and teaching about symmetry and teaching some math concepts but not saying so.

Shiffman: Those were the books you wrote for children?
WALTER: Yes. And also I did some cards and I did some other things that are very informal hands-on math kinds of stuff.

Shiffman: If anybody wants to look at that, or read it, what would they look for? What would the name of the book be?
WALTER: Well, there are several books, but they could Google… Well, most of them are out of print now. For the Mirror Books, they have crazy titles. Well, there’s the Mirror Puzzle Book and Make a Bigger Puddle, Make a Smaller Worm is another one of them. But if anybody is in math education they can find out. I did some books with a colleague, Steve Brown.

Shiffman: And these were for younger children?
WALTER: Well, the books are for younger children and a couple of books are for teachers. And again, the Mirror Books I would not have done without having been to Herrlingen.

Shiffman: It’s really interesting that your interest in math is so emotional, and that you would have written books for children.
WALTER: Yes. I think I’ve never grown up. You know, people ask me where I grew up and I say I haven’t yet. I was always very interested in art, and I think if I had had art training in school I think I would have gone into art, but we didn’t really have any art training. I always thought that the ideal job would be to be Walt Disney’s assistant.

In New York I was president of the math club at Hunter for a while, and I took people to a wonderful person whom very few people know about – Rutherford Boyd. Mathematicians said he was a mathematical artist, and artists said he was an artistic mathematician. I always thought the job to have (while I was still at Hunter) was that I would have wanted to become his assistant, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Shiffman: I’ve heard that you had a very unique method of teaching math, or your approach to math is very different. Would you like to talk about that a little bit?
WALTER: Yes, but it’s not unique. I think one thing I understand that some mathematicians don’t understand is how difficult it is for people who are not mathematicians to understand math. I can see both sides. I’ve had very, very good, famous math people tell me… It’s amazing how many (at NYU and at Princeton) people tell me… But I really understand what the difficulties can be, and I happen to be a very visual person and so my approach is very much hands-on/experiment. And I think that part of that comes from Herrlingen. I want people to explore – to really understand – so the thing I am probably partly known for is something called milk carton geometry. It’s a little book I did a long time ago called Boxers, Squares and Other Things and it’s very hands-on. You know, where the children can do things with material.

Shiffman: What did you call that?
WALTER: I mean colloquially it’s called milk carton geometry because I used to use milk cartons. And the stuff with the mirrors… You know, you can learn about symmetry before you learn the definition of symmetry. My feeling is experience it and…. I used to talk about stomach learning. I wanted the students to have stomach learning. And I’m very much into problem posing, which I did with my colleagues.

Oh, I didn’t tell you about how I got to Harvard. I had a sabbatical at Simmons and I wanted to stay for the sabbatical in Boston because I had a friend there, and so I was at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and I must say that was one of the lies in my life I have told because in order to get accepted there you had to be a degree candidate, and I had no intention of getting my degree, I just wanted to spend my sabbatical in Boston, and so I went there. It wasn’t so bad, and I felt that maybe I could do it, so I continued part-time to get my EdD degree, and for my final project I had to be able to go to the schools in the morning. I was chairperson of the department for many years, but I didn’t like it so I hired somebody over me but then he wouldn’t let me have the mornings free to finish my thesis, so I left.

Then I worked for this company, EDC, which is sort of an educational place where I worked there for a while.

So after I got my EdD degree in Mathematics Education at Harvard I stayed there and taught in the Master of Arts and Teaching Program, and then in 1970 they told us they were going to abolish the Master of Arts and Teaching Program in 1972. And everybody was looking for jobs, but getting jobs was not my favorite activity so I didn’t do anything about it and in 1972 I didn’t have a job. Then a job opened up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where somebody asked me to come and interview and I went and really didn’t want to go there, but the person there was so good that I decided a year with her would be great, so I worked a year in Halifax. That was in 1973, and after that I still didn’t really have a job. I’m not sure what I did, and then I gave a talk at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where there was a very good professor, and one day he called me up and said I should go to the next lecture because it would really interest me. So I went, and where angels fear to tread fools rush in – and the professor asked if I would like to give the talk the next month because of all the hands-on stuff/concrete material (laughs) and so I said yes. And little did I know but there were all of these psychiatrists and doctors and they had all kinds of theories about learning. I had no theories about learning, I just did it, but they found that what I was doing fit it with their theories of learning, so I got a job there.

And then I still didn’t really have a teaching job, but I had a consulting job at the U of O for the summer in 1977. They called and said there was going to be a one-year job opening and asked if I wanted to apply for the job and I told them I would see when I came for the summer and they said, “No, no. You have to apply for the job.” So at some point I sent my vitae, but they said no, I would have to fill something out, so I did that. Then I went to England for a math meeting. I used to try to go every year to the math meetings there, and when I came back and was fast asleep because of the time difference, I had a call to say I got the job, and I thought, for one year why not…

Shiffman: What year was that?
WALTER: I started here in September of 1977.

Shiffman: Do you have anything that you want to tell us that jumps out at you of these later years when you were teaching – either how you might have been treated differently had you been a man, with your expertise and knowledge, and/or if you think being Jewish… Did you experience anything that you feel might have been sort of, “Well, she was a refugee and she’s Jewish and doesn’t quite fit.” Anything along those lines.

WALTER: I’ll think about it.

[Beginning of Second Part of Interview]

Shiffman: It is December 7, 2010. This is Shirley Shiffman and I am back with Marion Walter to resume our interview.
It has taken quite a while, but I am happy to be with you again. I believe we covered up to 1977, when you arrived in Eugene. Would you like to pick things up there and tell us about your impressions of the University of Oregon and the community?
WALTER: I did come in 1977, and I came for a one-year appointment. I took a job opening for one year and I can remember that they said I did not need to come for an interview because it was only a one-year appointment and I said, “No, I do have to come to see what the place is like because I don’t drive.” I did come before I had signed the papers to come here for a year, and I found that it was a good place to be if you do not drive because there were lots of buses, and everything you needed was downtown. So I came and I started teaching in the Mathematics Department, and I rented a place since it was only a one-year appointment. There was only one other woman in the department, and I was amazed actually at how many Jewish people were in the department. The provost of the U of O at that time was Paul Olum. He was a mathematician, was in the Math Department – and he later became president of the U of O. I knew his wife, Vivian, after whom the Vivian Olum Center is named. But I actually knew them from my Cornell days in the 1950s, so that was very nice.

Shiffman: Do you want to tell us who the other professors were when you arrived? Do you remember any names?
WALTER: Well, Paul Olum was there, and there was Gary Seitz. Of course, they have all retired now. There was Bill Kantor, who just left Eugene with his wife. And the Barrars and the Loebs. There were some people outside of the department. I was very busy teaching, and I spent a lot of my time teaching – days, evenings and weekends. I was one of those people who when I was making up exams I tried to make each page with the same amount so students would not look to see which question was worth how much, and I can tell you how long ago this was. We used mimeographed sheets, and you could get them in colors, so on my exams I used color to make it more user-friendly.

The person whom I replaced did not return, and a three-year contract came up. Jobs in Boston were still not opening up, so I applied for it because there was no job for me in Boston and I got the three-year-contract, so I stayed another three years, and then the three-year contract came up, but I had forgotten it. I think eventually somehow I was offered tenure, and there still was no job in Boston so here I stayed.

Shiffman: Did you find it very stimulating at the university, or did you at any stage feel that had you been elsewhere you would have been more recognized or well known? Did you find any stimulating groups or committees that you could join, and how did that compare to Harvard?

WALTER: It’s actually interesting that you asked that. The thing that I liked best while I was in Cambridge, and that I missed most when I was here, was a group that was formed in Cambridge called The Philomorphs. It took place at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and of course Cambridge is a wonderful place. It has MIT and Harvard and Brandeis, with people coming through all the time so we did not have the time to get all of the possible speakers that came flying through. There would be economists, linguists, musicians, artists and mathematicians, all meeting and talking about the same topic from different points of view. It was fascinating. We did not advertise these meetings because had we advertised the next week there would be a linguist talking about something and only the linguists would have come, so it was purely by word-of-mouth. We signed in if we attended and then we were notified when the next meeting was, and if we brought somebody that was fine, but it was not advertised. In any case, that is the thing that I miss the most. However, one thing I must say about the University of Oregon, and it has gotten worse, is that it is very difficult to meet and talk to people from other departments. And although I am in math – in math education – I am interested in the visual arts and I did try to make contact with the Art Department but it was not easy to go across departments so I asked them whether I could start something called Philomorphs West here, and for many years Philomorphs West was meeting. And again, by word-of-mouth.

I remember the first speaker – I do not remember his name, but it was somebody who was visiting just that week, and he had to do with the eyes of butterflies and the lens on the eyes of butterflies. And you can see it involved color and many different things. It was a wonderful meeting, and after that we tried and tried to get somebody to talk every month – we had to be sure to get a room, and so to make sure that the speaker would come on time and would find the room I started a thing where we would have supper at China Blue beforehand and we would all chip in and pay for the speaker, and then we could carry him or her off to the place. And that worked out really well but then after a number of years we ran out of people who could speak, because Eugene does not have many people coming through. I remember, geologists came, and linguists came, and physicists came, and I still occasionally until a few years ago would meet somebody on campus who would say that they missed the Philomorphs.

Then I went on sabbatical and I think it was Bill Holzer, who was a geologist, who took over, and when I came back it was still going but more and more people came from the computer science area and computer graphics and so on. And eventually they sent out notices via computer instead of by hand, and that was very good. In any case, when it became too taken over by the computer people it died, so it does not exist anymore. It also disbanded in Boston, I think.

Shiffman: Let us talk about your connection to the Jewish Community. When you arrived did you join a synagogue or did you not? What can you tell us about that?
WALTER: It is interesting. When I arrived I did join a synagogue, right away, although during all my years in Boston and Cambridge I never belonged to a synagogue. I may have joined mainly because there were so many Jewish people in the math department; otherwise, how would I have even known about the synagogue? The synagogue does not send out notices to new faculty (laughs) does it?

Shiffman: I do not know about that because… It does not mean to say because they were Jewish they belonged to the synagogue.
WALTER: Though I think that Bill and Gary and Henry and Dick certainly did. But I do not think the synagogue gets a list of new faculty and says, “Are you Jewish?” (laughs).

Shiffman: Is there anything else about your involvement over the years? Any committees you were involved in or any activities?
WALTER: That is a good question. Of course I was, but I do not remember what committees one has to be on at the University and I do not think I belonged to anything that I went to regularly. When I came I was very concerned about the art department because I am very interested in the visual arts. Eventually I did teach a course in the art department called “Links between Mathematics and the Visual Arts” for people in the art department who hated math. I also taught that course once in the math department for teachers, and occasionally I would meet teachers who would tell me that it was the most useful course they had for teaching, but I do not think it had enough math in it for the math department to let me continue it. I am really not sure because I only taught it once. In any case, I do not think I belonged to any clubs or things like that.

Shiffman: Okay. Now after talking about math and art – are there many connections between math and music? Is there any connection with you? Are you in any way a musician?
WALTER: Unfortunately I had no musical training whatsoever, and I had really not much art training at school, but I have to tell you that before my operation recently I saw a toy keyboard at a garage sale and I bought it because I thought I should learn to play the piano (laughs). That is good for your brain, and every time I want to sit down and do it seriously I think it might be more useful for me to learn to type (laughs). However, I am listening much, much more to music than I used to. I am amazed at myself – I am going to brag now – at how many times I can tell who the composer is, even though I am not musical. I was very proud of the fact that I could recognize a piece by Dvorak that I had not heard, but I felt that must be Dvorak.

Shiffman: Tell us a little bit more about your interests. I know you have spoken about your tile work to me, so please tell us something about that.
WALTER: I have always been interested in the connection between mathematics and the visual arts because I think one can get people interested in mathematics at an early age through art if they do not like math, and my interest stems from… Well, it is a long story, way back to about 1950. I did not know anybody who shared my interest in both of them. But eventually in the 1980s there came one person who started a conference on mathematics and art and since then it has just blossomed. It is just amazing. There are international conferences now on mathematics and the visual arts every year, and I could give you web sites that would keep you busy for the rest of your life just looking at what has been done with mathematics and art.

Shiffman: Tell us about your artwork, your tile work.
WALTER: Well, I just like doing things with my hands and I actually did the tile work… I took an Elderhostel course for a week on tile making and decorating. I would get up before anybody else and go to bed after everybody else, and I made a lot of tiles but unfortunately I gave the good ones away and I only have photographs of the ones that I gave away. And the Elderhostel was, of all places in Massachusetts (laughs).

Shiffman: When you talk about tiles, are you talking about four-inch square tiles or…?
WALTER: Gosh, I do not know what size they are, but probably about four-inch. Some of them we just decorated and some we made.

Shiffman: Did you continue it after you returned home?
WALTER: Unfortunately not. I used to do a lot of copper enameling when I was in Boston, for hours and hours. I had a kiln and one of the things is that I like art forms that you do not have to do exactly what you are supposed to do. For example, in quilting you better cut it exactly right. When I first learned copper enameling and they would show us how to do something the first thing I would say was, “What will happen if you don’t do that?” And I would do the opposite and I loved that (laughs). I do not plan ahead. It is all very spontaneous. I do not like to follow directions. I do not do it with cooking recipes either (laughs).

Shiffman: I’m looking at some pictures in this other book. What are these?
WALTER: Those are photographs I took for teaching a course called “Links Between Mathematics and the Visual Arts.” These are different tiling patterns in different streets and so on, and one studies the mathematics of that. Here are some brick patterns. I also have taken hundreds of photographs of hubcaps because the hubcaps all had different symmetries and symmetry is something we study in mathematics. I know nothing about cars. I could not tell you one make from another, but I can recognize any new hubcap that has come out (laughs). I also love the bark on trees, and stone patterns. Can you see these moss patterns?

Shiffman: So you are quite a photographer?
WALTER: Well, yes. These are photographs.

Shiffman: Marion is showing me a series of photographs, which are absolutely amazing, of barks of trees.
WALTER: Let me show you my very favorites. Here are sand patterns on a beach, and these are just leaves. Now this photograph I actually took at a math conference in England. It is of a stone. It shows the network of white patterns on the stone.

Shiffman: Your photographs are amazing.
WALTER: I just used a very cheap camera and ordinary printing.

Shiffman: But you have a very good eye.
WALTER: I do think that we want children to be literate. They should be able to read, and we want them to be able to do some arithmetic. But I think we should teach children to be visually literate, and there was a time when the job at Harvard ended and I was thinking one should start a center for visual literacy. There was a visual center at MIT, but it was a very highbrow place.

Shiffman: Well this has all been very interesting. I guess the other thing that I would like to touch on, if you are comfortable, is your illness. Would you like to tell us when you first experienced it and how you feel it has changed or affected your life?
WALTER: I have multiple sclerosis. I have the kind that is called primary/progressive, so luckily I do not get exacerbations, so I do not get injections and stuff that people get when they have the other kind. It obviously came on very, very gradually. I kept on falling, and eventually they took an MRI (in the early 1990s I think) and suspected it. You cannot really diagnose it except for ruling out everything else unless you have a spinal tap, which I was not willing to have. Then I remembered two things: That in the 1980s, when I first came, I went hiking with somebody and I remembering saying I did not want to go any farther because my right leg was getting tired. It is mostly my right leg that is affected. And that probably was already it. Then I remembered only much more recently that when I was a teenager and we used to do a lot of ballroom dancing that I used to say after a long session of ballroom dancing “My right leg doesn’t do as it’s told.” My hunch is that I probably had very slowly progressing MS for quite some time.

You asked how it is affecting me. Well, now I walk with a walker, which is to stop me from falling. I can walk without it, but I trip. Even in my apartment I should use a cane and sometimes I do not, and I cannot tell you how many times I have fallen, but luckily it has been into a sofa or chair. That is why I wear a lifeline. I have not traveled much, although I suppose I could, but I cannot sit for long periods of time because I get painful spasms. And that is one of the funny things about multiple sclerosis – people see me and say, “Oh, you look so well” and they think everything is fine, but you cannot have an idea of how suddenly you can get these awful spasms or you get so very tired. Those are kind of invisible signs. I go to a class called Strength Training for People with Multiple Sclerosis, and partly I go to be with other people who understand what is going on, although in that class I am the only one who has primary/progressive. Most the others have relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis and most of them are on these injections, which are not pleasant to get. Eventually that kind of MS turns into secondary/primary, so I actually am very lucky that it seems to be slow growing, although I can feel it affecting my left leg as well; but mostly I just cannot do what I used to do – you know, in terms of running around. People are kind and they give me rides, but it is a nuisance to put the walker into the car and out of the car. And I cannot try flying again. The idea that I am not going to ever leave Eugene and get back to Boston or England or New Zealand, where my nieces are… Even the other day I was at synagogue actually listening to the lecturer about the Muslims. I sat on my walker because it is easier for me to sit on something hard than soft, but I got such spasms and then I could concentrate, but I am lucky as far as people with multiple sclerosis are concerned in that it has not affected my eyes. For many people it affects their eyes, and the exacerbations must be awful. And I had to really learn to say exacerbations, because I would get exasperated and then I would mix up those two words (laughs) and it was very difficult for me to keep them apart.

I have recovered from my hip replacement, more or less, and this might be good to get on the record: I called the Multiple Sclerosis Society and they said it was no problem having a hip replacement on the leg that was affected by the MS but that is not quite true. The spasms were terrible, and it has not helped the MS and it probably has not helped the hip replacement either. It is not 100%. The surgeon said it was just beautiful, but I am very aware of it. The people I know who have had hip replacements say they have forgotten about it, but as I said I am still very aware of it.

Shiffman: That you for sharing all of that Marion. Thank you so much.
WALTER: Thank you.