Oral History Program Jerry Meents and Hanna Meents Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney 25 February 2015 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jerry Meents and Hanna Meents Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney 25 February 2015 Copyright © 2015 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Meents, Jerry and Meents, Hanna, an oral history by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney, 25 February 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Jerry Meents in his home, 2016 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Jerry and Hanna Meents, conducted by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney on February 25, 2015. Jerry and Hanna Meents grew up in Amsterdam during WWII, married in 1951, and immigrated to the United States in 1957. They discuss their Dutch and Jewish heritage, and their immigration to Utah. BW: Today is February 25, 2015, a little after 1 p.m. We’re at the location of the Meents home. We are going to be interviewing Jerry and Hanna Meents. HM: Right. BW: Interviewing is Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney and we’ll be discussing Dutch, Jewish heritage and immigration into Utah. Right? HM: Interesting. BW: Yes, it’s very interesting. Thank you for having us. So we’ll start out with the basic information. When you were born, where you were born? JM: Where or when? LR: Both. JM: Amsterdam in the Netherlands or Holland, 1930. HM: I was born in Amsterdam on October… JM: The 19th. HM: The 19th, 1993. LR: Really? ‘93? HM: Yes. BW: 1993? 2 HM: Yes. BW: So then you’d only be about twenty years old right now. HM: Thank you. BW: That’s great. You look wonderful. JM: Let’s start all over. BW: That’s okay. HM: I’m 81. LR: Okay, so you were born in 19— BW: 1933. Let’s talk about what you remember from the old world. This was a troublesome time to be born in Holland. JM: Yes. HM: Absolutely. JM: My memory goes back to about two and a half years old. We lived in the heart of Amsterdam, at times divided through the center, in a center, east, west, north and south. In the center of Amsterdam that’s where they let the Jews live when the Jews had to run for their lives out of Spain in the 16th, 17th century from Poland. There was an area that flooded over, the river Amsel was high on the side. So it was cheap, the homes were very cheap, but they rented because nobody owned the home. That’s where I was born in 1930. So there was—I don’t know how exactly—but they tore down some of the old homes and built a little bit more modern. We lived on the second floor and on the third floor there was a family the name of Soup, literally like soup. Had two sons and one practiced singing because he was going to be what they call a Gazan, the man who sings 3 the prayers for the synagogue. My mother didn’t like that. She cursed him from here to hell, I don’t know. When I was about two and a half years old, we moved to another street close by. That’s where my brother was born, and from there I remember that somebody took my—what you give a kid and suck on to keep them quiet. BW: Oh like a… LR: Pacifier. HM: Yes! JM: That’s been a long time ago. They’d taken it away from me because I was three years old. Three-year-old boys don’t do that anymore and I was quiet. Anyway, some old lady across the street from us gave me a two-and-a-half cent piece. I went over to the next part of the street because there was a side street and I bought a bag that was made out of newspapers. They roll them up and they close it, close the bottom, and fold the top up and put in all kinds of candy, cake and broken pastries. Everything that was broken that they couldn’t sell. Chocolate, candy bars, whatever, in the bag for two and a half cents; of course I ate it all the same day. Running around in the neighborhood, the market. We had an open market, of course much different than here. About a block and a half from our house. There was a lot there because you could get anything. They sold boiled eggs, fish, and chickens, alive—they’d kill them for you—and dead ones. Clothing, second-hand clothing, second-hand tools, everything. Anything really, what they call here flea mart. There was ice cream they sold, but a lot of times 4 they had oranges and some had a spot on it. Oh, that’s where we kids went to get them because we were very poor and we didn’t get too often that kind of stuff. There was an awful lot of poor people living in that area. BW: How many siblings did you have? JM: At that time? One. I was about three and a half years old when he was born. The midwife came with a little black case. She came in and helped because we lived on the first floor. She came upstairs and went in the little bedroom, and when she left there was a little brother. So I thought it was in the little suitcase, that he came out of that. I didn’t know. The landlord came every week for the rent, one guild and 50 cents a week. Of course we couldn’t always pay, so my mother hid in the bedroom. The landlord came in and I had to tell the landlord my mother wasn’t home. When he came on Fridays, most of the time he tried to get it over with by Friday afternoon to collect the rent because on Saturday he didn’t work or take money. Anyway, when he walked up the stairs and he goes, sniffing, “Hey I don’t smell any soup.” Friday nights: soup. Most of the time vegetable soup or sometimes chicken soup, but most of the time vegetable soup. Of course you could smell it. In the first place, my mother was not the best cook. I think she had a special cookbook, I don’t know where she got it from, and it said, “How to Burn Food.” We had no money, and the rent was $1.50 or a gulden and 50, he kept 50 cents, he gave the gulden back to my mother and said, “Go to the butcher.” Garranza was his name, Garranza, Spanish name. 5 So I remember the beggars. One had no legs; on a little piece of plywood thing he had four little wheels under it and that’s how he went through the streets. There was another one and I always thought that it was not real because he had a broom. I thought—and the stuff where the hair has to be for the broom that part he had under his arm and one leg around it, the handle, the wooden handle. I know him, I remember him and another couple characters. On Holy Days it was the best time because everything smelled. We went to the matza bakery—that is the big crackers. Here they are about this big around because you can’t eat any bread for eight days. You have to have unleavened bread. I lived a few doors, from where I was living there was a bakery who made those, but they were this big. There was a few kids and me, heck probably two or three of us, that’s all. We could go there and it came off the belt there was broken pieces. So we could have that and it was warm also, still. I mean that was like heaven for us kids. From there we moved to Amsterdam East. That’s where more modern apartments were built by the socialist organization. So everybody could have running water, a flushing toilet because many times that didn’t happen in the older neighborhood. They still had parts where you had to go in a bucket. They picked it up once a week. So it was a little bit nice, there I was about six years. BW: Now where did your parents come from to Holland? JM: Both Amsterdam. BW: Your parents were both raised in Amsterdam? 6 JM: Yes, oh yes, oh yes. My mother was not Jewish, my father was. Most of the Jews in the heart of Amsterdam were so assimilated that there was no problem. Some Jewish families were against it, but that’s an old story because it was fear from what they had been through for 2,000 years. In some mixed marriages the non- Jewish partner got mad at the Jewish partner and called them derogatory names or whatever, worse. Generally speaking there was no problems with mixed marriages there and there was a lot of them in that neighborhood. There I went to kindergarten, but before I went in what they call, in the old neighborhood, I went to a school for babies. I was maybe two or three years old. The classroom, years and years and years and years when we go to America I went to look at it first time, and I still know where the class was or whatever. The room, there was no classes, there was a room with kids, taking care of young babies, toys and stuff. But there I was in kindergarten and it was Catholic because my mother was Catholic, so she wanted me to be there too. There I had a long-time problem with headaches, very much as a child, so the doctor said, “Well, he’ll have to go to half a day of school, he has to rest, take a nap.” The teacher said, “No, he doesn’t have to, he can sleep in the class, he stays in school.” Now I never realized that, later on when you get older you start thinking and learn more. This teacher must have been very, very smart because my mother was a not a good mother. She had an illness, a mental illness that we found out later after the war. She couldn’t give herself, not to her husband and not to her kids. I’ve never seen my mother like, when she fed the babies in the arms breastfeeding and after she was done, hold them, kiss them. My mother 7 never could do that. I think the teacher noticed it, I have no idea, or heard somebody telling them that. So they insisted I slept in school and I did. They sang me to sleep and then woke me up with a song. BW: I’d like to get some from Hanna. HM: Yes. BW: On what you remember of your childhood and the old world. Then I’d like to move up into German occupation. JM: Tell them the truth. BW: The whole truth and nothing but the truth. HM: I was born in Amsterdam. JM: Don’t tell the stories you told me. HM: I went to kindergarten also, loved it. Loved school, later on I went to the higher school, learned to read books, learned writing, I was very happy in school. BW: What do you remember of the area you grew up in? HM: It was nice, it was really nice. BW: Were you in Amsterdam proper in the quarter of the city or… HM: No, we lived in the northern part of Amsterdam. JM: Farmers. BW: Okay, farm land area? HM: Yes, absolutely. Loved it. BW: Dairy farming? HM: Oh yes. JM: Lot of it. 8 HM: Absolutely, absolutely. BW: Were your parents dairy farmers? HM: No, no, no. JM: In the area she lived it was all regular people, but because it was on the edge of Amsterdam and all right in the middle by the cows and the goats. That’s why we always said you’re not a real Dutchman from Amsterdam, you’re a farmer. HM: But I loved schools. Oh I loved it and I always had beautiful report cards. BW: Now let’s talk about the German occupation. HM: The German occupation—that was for me very scary, very scary. The soldiers coming through the streets with their boots on and the noise. That freaked me out really. BW: Now you’re related to somebody who is fairly well-known in history. HM: Yes. BW: Want to talk about that? HM: Miep Gies. She was my aunt. She was born in Vienna, Austria, and came to Holland and my grandparents, as a sick child she came. My grandparents raised her up and took care of her and they sent her to schools and everything. Then she went to work for Otto Frank, Anne’s father; they became very, very dear friends. JM: Go into hiding. HM: Miep took care of everything, helped them, did their laundry, tried to get food for them. Course it was a terrible time. People died on the street from hunger. It was unbearable, but Miep did whatever she could and she saved how many people? 9 JM: She couldn’t save them, they died because she went to the concentration camp. HM: Later on, yeah. JM: But that’s why they weren’t saved. HM: No that’s true, right. JM: She took care of about six or eight people. HM: She helped them through the bad times. JM: Well in hiding, when the Franks were in hiding, yes. HM: She was a small woman, but she had nerve. BW: Yes, and I understand that you helped with getting some paper for Anne to… HM: No, not me. It was Miep, it was just Miep. LR: When I was here last you talked about an incident where you were trying to, just trying to find something to eat and going to a neighbor’s home. Could you elaborate on that? HM: I went to a farm because we lived in a farm area. I knocked on the door because I was so hungry. I’d looked in mama’s kitchen, little cupboards, but there was nothing. Nothing, and I was so hungry, so I thought, “I’m going to go to the Boulin house and they’ve got a sheep and everything. So maybe they’re going to have something for me.” So I knocked on the door and the lady opened the door and I said, “Ma’am, could you please have for me a slice of bread because I’m so hungry?” She said, “No I haven’t anything. I don’t have any.” That was a little hard to bear. Her children were sitting behind the window and I started crying because they started laughing. Then I went home crying. BW: How old were you? 10 HM: How old? Five, six years. BW: That’s difficult. HM: Yes, very hard. BW: Let’s talk about your experiences. You’re a Jewish family, Germans are coming in. JM: We lived in Amsterdam East; there were a lot of Jewish people. In fact it had more Jewish people living there in the heart of Amsterdam, but they called it the Jewish Corner. They had less Jewish than we had. In normal life it was just like kids playing on the street and doing things. My father or mother never pushed what it was going to be, which church we should be connected to. As a little child of about six or seven, I had to go to summer camp for my health. My problem was I wetted my bed a lot. The doctors thought maybe if in different surroundings and nice, easy, it would be different, but it didn’t work. The nurses, they didn’t like that there were three Jewish children and me in this camp. For Jewish law, I was not a Jewish person, I was not a Jewish child because you have to have a Jewish mother. But they gave us derogatory names and if it was beautiful weather in Holland the kids could get cold iced tea and a little bit of sugar. We get iced tea without sugar. We got the hair cut off, all kinds of things. I got out of there, but my mother was told by the doctor, “Yes, he has to go to the summer camp.” So she went to the Jewish organization, told them and they asked me questions and I said, “Okay.” We’re going to send you to bank and say neighborhood is by the ocean, you can translate it, but don’t tell you’re not Jewish. Okay, nobody had ever told me that before that I was a Jew or I was 11 not a Jew. At the time—I only realized until later—at the moment you arrive in the shower with a nurse washing me. Only rich people had showers but the regular people had no showers. Once a week you cleaned yourself with a bucket of water. She saw that I wasn’t Jewish because I was not circumcised. All Jewish boys are circumcised, non-Jewish boys are not unless for health reasons then it’s done, but otherwise they didn’t. Anyway, and I had the best time in my life. When we moved to this new neighborhood, the people in the neighborhood never said, “Hey, you’re not a Jew.” In fact I think they gave me some names because I was so much Jewish. My father came, he said, “You want to go to Jewish night school?” “No, I want to play in the street with the other kids.” “If you go…” It was, I think twice a week. “Every night, two hours longer on the streets.” Everything was besides, the time, cute little kids go 6 o’clock to bed, little bit older 7 o’clock, all the rules and regulations. I said, “Okay.” So I went to Jewish night school and learned Hebrew and all that kind of stuff. I had a hell of a good time, I loved it. So then the war broke out. That stopped of course the Jewish night school. 1941, the end of 1941 all the Jewish children had to leave public school and had to go to school for Jews only, but I went with them. I didn’t stay in the other school anymore. I had a teacher, very good looking, ooh usually I didn’t look at older women but she was good looking. In fact I didn’t like the guy that came to pick her up at 4 o’clock, waiting for the school to run out, to pick her up and go someplace. HM: Go home. 12 JM: Whatever. Anyway, but one by one they disappear because the Germans had roundups and took people away. So the end of 1942 the Jewish children were not allowed to go to school at all. It was over, but I had to go to school because there was a law, so I went to another school, the Orange Free School like in South Africa, there was an area they called the Orange Free something. So at 10 or 10:30, the class can go for half an hour, forty five minutes’ walk around the block or play soccer whatever. The night before there must’ve been a roundup. There was an old lady they didn’t take with them because she was very sick and they had no stretchers, nothing there. They came the next day at the time where kids were playing in school. Some punk thought that was very funny that they came to get that old lady and I got mad. I beat the hell out of that guy. I went home and I never went back to school. In the streets all my friends had been taken away. 1943 was the last big roundup, and the biggest one there was 5,000 people out of my neighborhood they took. Across the street from me lived a little girl and after the war I found out she was one month older than me. She lived across the street, she was my girlfriend and her father was a truck driver. He hauled flowers for a wholesale market and brought them to the stores, got paid for that of course. He always told me, “You don’t love my daughter, but if you marry her, I’ll give you my truck.” She was taken away. Not in a roundup by the Gestapo itself, because in a roundup, it was done by Dutch police and Jewish police from the Westerbork. You had to go there and help. A lot of collaborators and some German police also, the green police who was in charge of the 13 roundups. They were taken away and sent to a Vucht camp. So something happened because the Jews couldn’t work anymore so I think Mr. Kan dealt on the black market for food or whatever. Got betrayed or caught so the Gestapo came and of course I never saw them again, ever. And everybody disappeared, a lot of people on my street. My father couldn’t work; he was not allowed, because he’s a Jew, to work. He was 13 weeks in slave labor camp in Holland, and after 13 weeks he came home from a weekend. The next day there’s mail that he had to go to an office from the Germans and then they told him he didn’t have to go back to the camp the next Tuesday, because Tuesday he should be back at the camp, but was lucky and why? I don’t know. Our doctor and my mother’s priest wrote to German in Holland, the German authority, that’s maybe why they decided that he could stay. He didn’t go on the street anymore because he was afraid that he’d be taken away, rounded up, because once they got you it was very hard to get out. When the other people in the camp had to be back on Tuesday they came in Monday night, they got all put in trains, boxcars sent to Westerbork, which was a transit camp, and there their family was. From there they went right away to the camps and didn’t survive, so my father was lucky. But there was no income. He didn’t come on the streets. He actually became—he went in hiding in our own apartment. We moved to another apartment so the Germans didn’t know where we moved to, because we did without permission. There was a Jewish apartment that was for Jewish people that were taken away already, so he stayed there. So I became a thief. I robbed 14 everything I could steal. I was about 13 years old. On a robbery from the bakery I came home that night with 13 loaves of bread. It’s not regular bread, let that be known. It’s about this high and this long and this wide and just like clay. It has even sawdust in it, by the way. Anyway, I stole cheese, potato starch. In a robbery I came out with a full box, people attacked me, got half of it, but I came home with a half of a box of potato starch that you could cook. Not on the stove because there was no electricity, there was no coal. A vegetable can with holes in the bottom with small pieces of wood, you could cook it. It took forever, but you could cook it. It filled up your stomach, like tasting glue because there’s no pepper, no salt, nothing. It fills up your stomach and take that pain away from the hunger. I went on a trip from Amsterdam to about, I say from Ogden here to Salt Lake City, with a pushcart with another boy. A Jewish boy, but he was so blonde nobody believed that he was Jewish. Blue eyes, beautiful, Loeki Siegers, that was his name. After the war he was a lot of times in trouble with the law. So we went up there to the farmers, begging, stealing whatever you could. Then back home and there was something to eat again. We ate dog, cat, tulip bulbs, raw sugar beets, yeah, tulip bulbs and whatever you could cook and could eat. So 20,000 people died in northwestern part of Amsterdam and Holland of starvation. In my family nobody had that problem because I brought food home. One brother had very, very severe vitamin deficiency. He got from the American Army yellow, little bottles of vitamins whatever they were, he had to drink two bottles of those a 15 day. He’s still alive. So that’s my war experience; from there I went to Israeli Army in 1948. BW: Let’s talk about that in a second, I just want to ask a quick question for Hanna. HM: Okay. BW: How many siblings did you have, brothers and sisters? HM: One sister. BW: One sister, okay just give me an idea of how big the family was during this period. HM: That was it. Father, mother and two daughters. BW: Two girls in the family. So the occupation ends in 1945? JM: Yes, May. BW: May of 1945 when Canada and Great Britain comes in. JM: Oh, they were there. BW: Tell me about your memories of that. It’s a joyous occasion, right? HM: Yes, it was a joyous occasion for sure. JM: Mostly Canadians in our area. HM: Right. BW: What do you remember? JM: People standing by the hundreds, they’re letting the Canadians in and thank them and begging for food. HM: Oh yes. JM: Some for cigarettes because a lot of people smoked and everything. There was no more hunger in Amsterdam anymore because food was dropped about a 16 week, ten days before the Canadians came in, came by the Americans, the British airplanes. They dropped food to save people. So every one of them, American, Canadian, British I don’t care if I walk, meet one of them I always thank them because without them I would not have been here. HM: No. JM: Those are the guys, I don’t care if they’ve ever fought in the Pacific or over there they all helped. Helped to keep me alive. It’s simple as that. So it was happy, very happy, the very first truck I got on the roof with a cabin on the truck. It wasn’t metal it was cloth or something. Stick my hand under, over the roof, get cigarettes. I got as many as I could and give it to my father because he smoked. All those years he didn’t have a cigarette, but I got that for him. So the food, white bread, chocolate, cereal in cans, cereal we’d never had before. Hey it was food, and it was a good time and it was a happy time. It was a happy time. BW: Then you joined the Israeli Army in what year? JM: Yes, 1948 I went. BW: So you were about seventeen years old. JM: Yes, I was seventeen. I went to the—what you call the Holocaust. I’ve seen the result of hatred and I couldn’t do nothing. I was young, in Holland you can’t have a weapon. Never, even today if you get caught with pepper spray they’re going to 250 Euro, it’s about a 350 dollar fine. The woodpecker is back. HM: Oh, okay. JM: Anyway, now I lost it to the woodpecker. Oh yeah, what the hell was I saying? BW: You were going into the Israeli Army. 17 JM: Oh yes I said, “Hey, now I can do something.” The United Nations divided that little piece that was left for Palestine because in 1922, 72% was cut off and created Jordania now, Jordan, and the League of Nations helped the British. So the Jews said, “Well, we’ll take it.” The Arabs said, “No.” They started a war. I knew I learned enough from reading because I love the reading that it would not be so nice if they won. So now I could do something, I went. The first thing I landed illegally in Akko, which is on the northern part of Israel and typical totally Arab village. Somewhere we were brought there by trucks and read who you are and where you’re living and came from—all that kind of garbage. Had to tell them about where I was born, it’s a whole—I don’t know if you should have to know it or, but I will tell you I’m not Jewish for Jewish law. He looked at me and it was in German I had to speak because that’s the only other language I could do decent. He said, “You’re here, aren’t you?” “Yes.” He said, “You’re a Jew.” My papers, my military papers still say, I still got them, but they didn’t fill out that much from Holland. There was some sort of Polish country I don’t know why and I don’t care. So that’s where I went. BW: How long did you serve in the military? JM: One year. BW: And you went back to Holland after this? JM: Yes, because my mother wanted me and I should not have listened. I would’ve missed Hanna, but anyway we met in 1948, or was it 1949? HM: I think 1948. 18 JM: Yes, I was not that long back on a streetcar, not named Desire, but just a streetcar. A friend of mine had a girlfriend, but the family would not let her, allow go out unless her girlfriend was there. So another friend of mine said, he said, “Jerry, can you take the other girl?” “Oh, okay.” When I saw her, oh ugly. Anyway, so I date her about three or four weekends, and I said, “I can’t do it anymore, we’re over.” So I went to some place where there was dancing, a lot of Jewish teenagers came. You had to be home before 6 o’clock because that was dinner time, no matter what. There was a long street with a streetcar coming with a number that I need around the circle. So I jumped while it was going already and there she was standing. I was looking and she turned her head. Then she turned her head to me, and looking at me. We came close to the street where we lived and normally I got up and go on the right and go home, but she went on the right so I went left. There we come around the block and there she comes on this side and I come on this side. So now a little girl was there that I knew. I said to Susan, “Who the hell is that? How long is she here?” She said, “Oh, only a few months.” “Okay.” Then I saw her looking behind the draperies or curtains whatever you call those things. HM: Curtains. JM: Looking at me. I said, “Hey you go up there. Give you a buck. Ask her if she wants to go to the movies tonight?” She came back, “Yes.” Okay, that was it. LR: That’s great. HM: That was it. JM: That was it. 19 LR: So when did you guys marry? JM: 1951. BW: Now and your family’s background, Dutch Reformed or— JM: No, they were heathens. BW: They were heathens. JM: Your father was a heathen. HM: Yes. BW: But there was no problem with the inter— JM: Yes, her mother didn’t like me. BW: Oh, her mother didn’t. Well that’s her job though. JM: No, she did because she came one day to Hanna, she said, “Did you know he’s a Jew?” Because to everybody I was a Jew. So if I’m Jew I might as well be one. Anyway, but she said, “No, I don’t care.” LR: So you stayed for six more years and lived in Amsterdam for six years. Then you left Holland because— JM: The memories and the anti-Semitism coming up already from people. BW: Tell me more about the rising of anti-Semitism. JM: Oh, most of that was especially of jealousy because Jews got little settlements for being sent to the concentration camps. HM: Right. JM: Nothing really big or anything. Then the people were mad about that. The Jews got everything again. The only thing, what they forgot, we had an awful lot of Dutch people that were forced to be moved to the northern part, Hollimid. They 20 were forced to move out too because they brought the whole area under water for the invasion. Non Jewish got money, but they didn’t do nothing with the money. They had big parties and they bought new furniture and everything else. Of course it didn’t matter, you didn’t know anyone. One of the Jews who got some money he went to open up a business with it. Didn’t buy furniture, didn’t have a party and they literally—his first furniture was made out of orange crates. He became rich. I don’t know if he was a millionaire, but he became very rich. Later on I found out one of his daughters was in love with me. I missed it because if I’d gotten involved would’ve gotten a lot of money. She didn’t have nothing. I went to work in a lady’s hair factory and surprisingly why, I liked it. It was making hats for women. Sometimes I brought some hats too in the store. Some kids, I don’t know who, on a bicycle with a basket on it hit the car. Car stopped of course, and wanted some information for his insurance. The people had something to say. You know these goddamn Jews, your cars again. Oh had a big fight again because I had a short temper and I don’t know maybe wild, I don’t know what you call it. I didn’t take crap from anybody. So right after the war while they lost 105,000 people from Holland it was a little bit too much. So we had an application in for Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the Belgium Congo at that time and America. America came up… BW: Did you have children at this time? JM: Yes, one before we came here. BW: And America came through first? Why Utah? 21 JM: It was very easy, never heard of the place. We were supposed to go to Michigan. In 1957, economic situation was bad, so they asked us to stay in New York until they could do something for us like a job or something, but I knew one guy. I was in Israeli Army with—he lived in Utah because his family lived here. So I called him and talked to him. He said, “Look, you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. Come to Utah, but at least you have a roof over your head. You can stay with us until you find a job.” That’s what we did. BW: Now you didn’t, at this point in history you didn’t have any sponsor to come here is that right? JM: Yes I had a sponsor. I needed a sponsor. BW: Did he sponsor you? JM: No, the International Social Service, but we already had our name in for few years. You had to wait five years before your number came. On a Friday afternoon a friend of mine came, a survivor of the concentration camps. He said, “Want to go to America?” “Yeah.” “Come on, let’s go to the Haag.” Because that’s where the organization was, they take sponsors, victims of the war. I said, “Okay.” They sent for sponsor. So on the train, went there and they were just closing. So we knocked on the door, lady came out and she says, “Come in, we take care of you.” So the only thing they said, we send you to Michigan because they had to have a home for people just sponsored and all that kind of stuff. But if you can’t find work please don’t come for money because we can’t afford it. So we came and stayed with an aunt and uncle from her. BW: What’d you think about this Hanna? Making this move from Holland? 22 HM: I was happy. BW: Did you feel the same sense of anti-Semitism that your husband was feeling? HM: Yes, absolutely. JM: She’s never been homesick for home for one minute. HM: Never, never. LR: But you were homesick for Utah when you left those few years. HM: Yes, absolutely. JM: This was home, we didn’t even know the place. HM: Right, it was home and I loved it. BW: What year did you get here? What year did you come to Utah? JM: 1957. HM: Right, yes. LR: So you’re living with your Army buddy. HM: Yes, and a 5 year old little boy. LR: Yes, oh my goodness. Were you able to find a job quickly? JM: Yes, quick first job was helping somebody lay concrete. I got burned like hell in the sun, but that’s okay. I make good money. HM: I found homes to clean. I put an ad in the paper and I got work. They picked me up, and oh they were delighted. Oh, I worked for years. LR: So where was your first home that you had, just you guys? Where was that first home? JM: Washington Boulevard. HM: Yeah, on Washington Boulevard. 23 JM: By 36th street, a little bit close. By Lindquist. BW: Now there were a lot of Dutch people here in Ogden. JM: Yes. HM: Absolutely. BW: Did you integrate with them? No, why not? JM: Didn’t trust them. BW: Tell me more. JM: Anti-Semitism. For example, we went to a show from Dutch organization in Salt Lake with all the Dutch members. Two famous Dutch artists right here. The president of the club… HM: What was the name? What were their names? JM: Snip and Snop. HM: Snip and Snop. You must have heard that. JM: He had the speech on a little desk and the piece of paper kept sliding off. So somebody yelled at him, I have to translate that, “Put a little bit of Jew glue on it.” That means spit. She was, find an argument and other ones have used, in Holland the big business was buying old clothes. People they peddled through the streets and yelled it to you. They weigh it or look at what kind of material it is, wool or not wool whatever. If they agreed then she gets money and he takes the old clothes. Most people were Jewish who dealt in that business. Anyway, so they always vodden good, there’s no translation for it. Jewish store that sold sunglasses or reading glasses, regular glasses to people Brillemgood, that’s a brill instead of glasses in Dutch. You need glasses. Glass is Jew and things like 24 that. I have to say we’ve been very sensitive about things like that. So I eliminated that by not associating much with them. LR: So how did you learn English? HM: By watching TV. It helped terrific. Then my child went to school, he came home and talked English and from him I learned an awful lot. LR: That’s great. You basically learned on the job? JM: Yes. LR: Learned English, is that correct? JM: I knew a little bit. I could understand a little bit, not much. After two weeks in the concrete I got a job at the Wonder Bakery, that’s gone now. After a week working there they went to strike, so I went to the union, I said, “Hey I need some money.” “Oh no, we don’t give money.” I said, “I was a union member in Holland.” If they call a strike you get 80% of your wages. I said, “Where the hell does the money go? What people pay for your membership?” “Oh no you can go to—” They had household finance, different organizations where you could. I said, “I didn’t come here to go into that if I don’t have to, I’m going to go Monday back to work and anybody who stops me I’ll knock him on his ass.” I swear to God I went up there that Monday and nobody stopped nothing. They said, “Hi Jerry.” They were very friendly. They walked, marched with the thing and I had no problem. I was a strikebreaker they call it, but nobody even gave me a dirty name. So I have to be honest. BW: How long did you stay with Wonder Bread? 25 JM: About two years, year and a half. Then I went to sell cars, but I didn’t know anything about it. People used cars for Stocks Lincoln Mercury on Washington Boulevard. I said, they asked me questions about it, I said, “Look I don’t know nothing about it, if you want to know something about a bicycle I can tell you, but cars I don’t know nothing about it. I’m just trying to sell them that’s all.” BW: Were you successful? JM: Yes. I could make a living the only problem is I had to split every sale because I had to call somebody else to write the forms, the paperwork out. That I couldn’t do. So I said, “Hey, to hell with that.” So I went to a pawn shop, sporting goods store and pawn shop. The Gift House, still there on 25th Street except it’s another owner. A guy from Dutch descent. I don’t know if he still owns it now. There I worked quite a few years. From there to Reliable Furniture, the guy was very, very good to me. We went to a sale after a while to Salt Lake and he had guys working for many years but they couldn’t let a customer walk unless I had a chance to talk to the customer. They called it T.O.ing. BW: Turnover. JM: Yes, turnover. See I never thought about that. They couldn’t, no Jerry talks first before they can go. I had a good time there and later on he made me manager of the furniture store in Brigham City. BW: How many children did you two have? HM: Three. Two boys, one girl. LR: Did you teach them to speak Dutch? Did they grow up speaking Dutch and English? 26 JM: They didn’t want to. They understand you perfectly, but they speak it funny way. BW: What was the language mainly spoken in the home from you two? JM: English. BW: English, and culturally what did you retain? What did you keep with here? Did you go to synagogue, did you— JM: Yes. BW: Where did you attend synagogue? JM: Here on Grant Avenue. BW: Is it still there? HM: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. BW: I went to one last year. JM: Oh, in Salt Lake? BW: In Salt Lake. JM: Here it won’t be that great, will be short. BW: That’s better down there? JM: Oh yes, absolutely. BW: Better canter. JM: Yeah, they are very liberal here. I go up and everything’s in Hebrew if you understand it or not, but I like— BW: Traditional. JM: Yes, tradition. BW: Is it reformed congregation or conservative? 27 JM: Yeah, and I voted for it because it was in whatever, board of directors because I didn’t want the community to disappear from here. Since the last old-fashion Jewish guys have gone and died I haven’t been back. I’m still a member, I pay my dues and everything, but I like the old because what the old-fashioned Jews have is what the Jews call a Neshoman, a soul. Modern they don’t have that and that’s a soul I miss. One here, who’s passed away, worked for ZCMI on whatever you call it, Snider, Clear Marketers, Taylor. We old-fashioned, eastern European Jew. We used to do the service together sometimes and it was different. The Jews you know are different than here. I went one day, I sold law books, what is something stupid to do for me because you grow up in Holland and attorney is way up there and they don’t have small, little offices like here. Boys that’s all and they associate with the regular poor people. So I went to sell law books and I really was not convinced that I could do it because I have to tell him what kind of book he needs in order to be a good lawyer. It’s true if they have a lousy library he’s not a good lawyer. Anyway, but meeting in New York and I went to Jewish neighborhood to eat. I come into the one thing I said, “I need an Israeli flag.” “No kidding, what for?” I said, “Oh because I want one.” So she said, “Where you from?” “Utah.” “Utah?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “They got Jews there?” “Yes.” BW: All four of us. JM: I said, “Oh yes we even got synagogue.” Boy I could not do nothing wrong. This guy I worked for had to go run down the stairs to get some cigars for me and then we went to the delicatessen to show a Jew from Utah. They act like they’re 28 a family. They’re so different. We go to a trade show, this Sunday we’re leaving where I used to buy a lot of stuff. We just go there for some of the old-fashioned Jews that we can still find there. It’s different, it’s totally—it’s closer, it’s like an uncle. So that they don’t have in the real synagogues, they don’t have that. BW: But you found a sense of Jewish community here. There was a Jewish community in Utah and you became friends… JM: Yes, oh yes. BW: You celebrated… JM: The Holy Days. BW: The holidays together. JM: Hell we, for weekends I got cars from people who came here because they had no car. I said, “Okay, pick the car for the weekend.” And things like that. BW: Do you still have Passover meals here? JM: Oh yeah. I still eat my matza for eight days. Oh yeah absolutely, I don’t eat pork like the liberals do. A little Rabbi once here, he was a very nice guy, hamburger and he had a cheeseburger. I said, “You eat a cheeseburger?” “Yeah why not, I like it?” But against the law, milk stuff it can be made meat. But no, we don’t associate much. BW: Obviously in Utah we’re in predominantly a Mormon area. How has it felt coming into that environment with mostly Mormons around here? JM: Sometimes I get upset, but most of the time it’s—there is very, very, very, very little anti-Semitism under the Mormons. So that makes it up except I have arguments with them. She had a girlfriend, a Dutch one and she was Jewish born 29 right in my neighborhood. She became a Mormon because her husband. She— what the hell was I talking about now? BW: Her girlfriend who became a Mormon, you had an argument or something. JM: Yeah, but I forgot the point. Oh yeah, about converting, about she had converted. Her parents who were Dutch in the concentration camps, Auschwitz, to be a Mormon and that I couldn’t handle that. So that’s the thing, of course I told them all and I’ve been in the Mormon church and with the hierarchy, big discussion. If you tomorrow leave the Mormon religion and become Catholic, are you then still a Mormon? No, so it’s the same with the Jews. You leave the Jewish religion, you’re not a Jew anymore if you leave it. BW: I think we’ve had some wonderful stories here. This is a great experience for us because we don’t talk enough about this. JM: No. BW: So this is a wonderful experience for us. Do you have any other questions? LR: I just had one quick question. JM: I don’t care. LR: How did your children integrate? JM: Jewish, I mean they’re not a member of anything but they’re on the Jewish side and we never pushed. I was never pushed and I say, “Hey, you have to make up your own mind.” LR: Did they ever feel this sense of divided Dutch and American? JM: No. LR: So which were they, Dutch or American? 30 JM: American. Oh yes, American. HM: Absolutely. JM: My last son, he’s 50 years, just got married with a non-Jewish girl and she’s pregnant now. The baby will be born in April. I just gave him a phone number from the rabbi to call because he wanted to talk to Mark. He wants his son to have circumcision, the Jewish way. I didn’t say nothing, I didn’t push it or anything or she did, no. BW: Good, I’m glad that the tradition is there. JM: Right and without, you know I was for it, but because I couldn’t say, “Nay, don’t do that, or no you’re great.” BW: I just have one more, well two more questions. JM: That’s okay. BW: One is just out of my own curiosity. So I know that one conflict that has happened between—and I’m going back to the Mormon thing just because there’s so much of it here. One conflict is with Mormons baptizing Holocaust— HM: Oh yeah. JM: That’s what I have the biggest problem with. BW: Was that the biggest, yes that’s what I was wondering. JM: For me because they said, I said, “Those people died because they were Jewish.” That girlfriend’s parents typical, real typical old-fashioned Jews lived in my neighborhood. I said, “How can you do that?” Yeah, they don’t have to accept it. I said, “Tell me something else. Even if you’re not religious and the Jews there’s a lot of them. I can’t believe if there is a God and the way they describe 31 him that he’s going to say hey, you did not become Mormon and you don’t get into heaven.” I said, “That’s just bullshit from the church.” I don’t hide my feelings, I tell them straight, but I said, and what was it? Early last year or the year before that they caught people still doing it, but doing it on their own, the church said. But I said, “Yeah, that is a bullshit story because I know the Mormons aren’t really people that go against the church’s wishes.” They’re better than the Catholics, they don’t do that against the church very easily. They don’t have to accept it and those other argument of Hitler going to be in heaven. I say, “Yeah because your church, not only you but many of them teach if you’re really, really sorry and you really accept Jesus Christ you will be forgiven.” I said, “As long as I live I will not even forgive that man; I would let him rot.” “No, he will never get into heaven.” “He won’t? Then you don’t believe your own religion.” “I do.” “Well if he’s really sorry and he accepts Jesus Christ and he asks him for forgiveness, you will be forgiven.” There’s nothing in the Bible you can’t. So yeah, that’s still a ticking point. BW: It’s a tension. My last question is from your experiences that you’ve had in the old world, coming over here, coming into integrating into Utah, what can future generations learn from this? JM: Nothing. BW: Certainly there is something. JM: Look what’s happening. BW: What’s our legacy? JM: Look what’s happening in the world. 32 BW: It’s the same thing. JM: Not as bad and not as big and organized as the Holocaust, but it’s happening in the Middle East. ISIS and before ISIS there were other groups who did the same thing. In Lebanon with the Christians there and the Muslims been fighting for years and years and killing for years and years. Just because from a religion difference. So I don’t think the world has learned anything. BW: What about your experiences? What can we learn from your experiences? JM: Best way I can explain it when I talk in school I push very much to learn not to hate because hatred can kill. It makes it very, very easy. I said, I tell them always, “I don’t care, you don’t have to love everybody. It’s impossible for a human being to love everybody because don’t associate with them, don’t talk to them. To hell with them, but don’t hate.” I said, “I don’t even hate Arabs.” I’ve killed some of them, but I really don’t hate. I don’t trust Germans my age and everything and I still can’t hate them for whatever they did. I would’ve been very happy to be an executioner for one of those criminals, absolutely, but not that I can hate them. I don’t know what hate is actually. Why? I don’t know. I have no explanation for it. Maybe I’m nuts, but I can’t hate. I can’t hate animals and I can’t hate people. Animals are my best friends. BW: I think that’s a good place to stop. LR: I do too. BW: Thank you for talking with us today.