Alice “Litzie” Trustin Shoah Foundation Testimony Transcription (Part 3)

A. Trustin. Litzie, can you tell me a little bit about going to school in Manchester?

Well, the most important thing I can tell you is I loved every minute of it. The contrast with the teachers in England versus the teachers in Vienna, it was like 180 degrees opposites. And I want you to know I was very happy in school in Vienna. I loved school. I always did. I was a strange kid. My kids can't understand that, but. But they were very authoritarian in Vienna. And it was, I mean, you wouldn't dare say something out of line, or if you weren't supposed to. I mean, it really, you were afraid of your teachers. You had to be. That was the system. And in contrast, the teachers in England were such "Menschen." They were so humane. They were so interesting and interested. They really loved what they were teaching. They enjoyed passing this onto their students, and it was marvelous! It was the most wonderful experience. I loved every day, even though we wore awful-looking uniforms. But that was all right, too. The first day, I decided I'm not gonna wear them. But you do it 'cause everybody else does it too. But, school, as a whole, was wonderful. Much more interesting, In Vienna, school was taught a lot by rote, a lot by memorizing. And if you were good at memorizing, you did extremely well. It wasn't so important whether you retained what you learned. And it was so, so different. And, of course, I was a little older then, and then it was in high school and so on. But it was, and the fact that we had sports, and I learned tennis and rounders, which is like softball, and, of course, we had swimming and, what else did we do? Oh, hockey. I loved hockey. I was on all the first teams. I had a wonderful time. I had a wonderful time.

Were you able to finish school in Manchester?

I finished high school. And then, I went to a secretarial school for three months, and I learned bookkeeping and typing and shorthand. And then, I started working for Sun Life Assurance Company, which is a Canadian, a big Canadian insurance company. And, we lived in, that's when, and I moved to Dorking, which is in the southern part, in Surrey, not far from London. Very pretty area. Where my sister was living and had been living for most of the time. And, by that time, my mother was living there, also, and her sister. And so, that was the first time we were near each, really near each other and could see each other. And, of course, that was all during the war. And... It wasn't until, I guess it must have been the, it must have been after the end of the war, that the, I think I mentioned that just before we finished, the American Army was recruiting for linguists. And, which was a marvelous opportunity. And I also thought, in the first place, I thought, "This is a way of maybe finding out what happened to some of our relatives."

Had you begun to hear any stories about what took place in Europe?

What to what?

Hear any stories about what took place?

Oh, well, of course we knew what took place. Of course, we knew what took place. We knew what took place before we ever left. That was the horrible thing. Even though everybody was saying, "They didn't know." It was ridiculous. Everybody knew. What we didn't know is how they died. I mean, we knew they were dead. There was no question in my mind that they didn't survive because we would've heard something by then.

While you were in Manchester, still in school, did any Jewish organizations look in on you?

No.

You were completely independent?

The fact that I lived with a non-Jewish family, I suppose they really didn't try to contact me for that. Well, which seems kind of foolish, too. They probably, might have been a good idea. But, they didn't. And to be quite honest with you, I became, very much, a nonbeliever. I wasn't, the Richies asked me to attend services with them. They were Episcopalian, and I wasn't about to do that either, but I really, I really lost any sense of religion at that point. And I won't go into this now because I think you wanna touch on this later when Yale joins us, but this is really how we met is when I was talked into going to a JWB service that was held in somebody's apartment in Frankfurt. Mostly for the survivors who were in camps. Who were the remnants of the concentration camps, who were in DP camps at that time. And some of them would drift into this little apartment for services on Friday night. But we'll talk about that later.

Tell me about your job. Were you trained specifically for a specific-

Well, actually, it was kind of funny because, supposedly, we were going to be linguists and we were going to be translating German mail. That's really what we were supposed to do. But I had good secretarial skills. I had been working for the insurance company and I was a good typist and a good stenographer. And so, I ended up as a secretary to the adjutant of G2, which was kind of fun. But most of the people, like myself, like my sister and her friend, and worked with G2, but in the censorship division, which is where they opened every piece of German mail, and scanned it for possible Nazi information or other information that would be detrimental to the United States. So this is what most of them did. And, but there again, what a whole new experience. First of all, being in Germany where I had never been, in Frankfurt, which at that time, Frankfurt was bombed quite severely. But the IG Farben building, which was this huge conglomerate, huge German company offices, was untouched. And I think, maybe, the United States Army decided they're gonna leave that alone. They're gonna need it for headquarters. And that's what they did. And, after, this sounds ridiculous. But after this very meager wartime diet in England, here we were in Frankfurt, and we were considered civilian employees, but we were able to eat in the officer's mess. So the food was very nice, but very strange. I mean, they served you things like cottage cheese with pineapple. I couldn't look at it. I thought that was the most awful-looking thing I'd ever seen to eat at lunch or dinner. But anyway, those are just little funny things. But, it was a great camaraderie. There were some marvelous people we met. There were French and Belgian and Danish. Most wonderful people, Danish.

These were military people-

No, these were all civilians hired for the same purpose as most of the German and Austrian people were hired for: to translate. This was a huge operation, this censorship division. And it was delightful. And, of course, I had never met any American people before. And everybody was so nice and so easy. I couldn't believe it because I was still, English people tend to be a little more formal too. And I kind of adopted that, and Europeans are more that way. They don't mean to be standoffish, but they just, they just think it's kind of rude to be, otherwise. And it was just amazing to-

In your work, did you ever come across anything significant?

Well, no. I must admit no. I think the people who did the translating probably ran into far more interesting things than I did. I was secretary to the adjutant, so it was really mostly headquarters' machinery that kept going. And my own experience didn't produce anything of any excitement, really.

What was this adjutant's name? Do you recall?

Well, yes. One was Colonel Paul S. Reinke, who was a wonderful, wonderful man. He was a West Point graduate, and his father was a West Point graduate. And his father wrote one of the West Point songs. Of course, I can't think now which one it was, but he was such a dear man. I mean, he was very short and he had a wonderful family. He always was talking about his beautiful wife. He had a lovely picture of her and children. And he was such a good representative of the United States. It was a wonderful way to begin a friendship with people. And then, there was, in contrast, there was a Major Getman. He was not very nice. He gambled most of the time, and drank most of the time, and wasn't at the office most of the time, but they sent him home pretty soon. But you know, that's all part of life. And then-

What were your feelings at this time, being around the German people?

Well, it wasn't, I have never found it very easy. And I'm sorry about that because I don't want to blame the people who are there now for what their ancestors did. I think the Germans, especially, have made great efforts to make the younger generation understand what a terrible fiasco and disaster they created, and how wrong they were. But at the time, of course, these were not, I was dealing with people who knew very well what had been going on. But we had very little contact with Germans, very little contact. We were in a compound. We were all American, or "allied civilians" as we were called. And we really did not have an opportunity, other than like, we would go to concerts or the opera, which was done in German for Germans, and the population there, of course, was German. But they were not people you really talk to. They sort of, I don't think they particularly wanted to. And frankly, I didn't want to either. It's only since our son, Mark, after law school, met his good pal from law school who, at the time, had joined the Judge Advocate Corp in the Army and was stationed in, near Bremerhaven, in Northern Germany. And Mark decided, Mark and Freddy decided they're gonna take a trip together. And Freddy Privel lived with his German family on the German economy. And he had told them that Mark was coming to visit, and his mother was Viennese and Jewish. And, by the way, Freddy is a good Catholic and a wonderful kid. And, the wife of the family was a little apprehensive, but it worked out very well. Mark said, "Really, they were very nice." The father, especially, had taken his son to Israel twice. He, and I'm sure this is not the usual, but for some reason it affected him that way, and he really has tried, since the end of the war, to come to grips with what had happened. And he did not want his children to ever follow in those kind of footsteps. And he wanted them to know how he felt, which I thought was marvelous. And, so Mark, and I never really talked much about this, except on very rare occasions when somebody would ask a question about any of my own experiences. And the children really don't have that problem of feeling that way about any group of people. But I had the same problem when I went back to Vienna. I have a hard time with, I think even more so than the Germans because I feel so aggravated by their reluctance in admitting their part in the whole scheme. And it was a very big part. They started a lot of it, especially against the Jews. Not the Germans. It was the Austrian Nazis who did that.

When you were first in this job, did you make attempts to locate any family members or try to find out

Oh, yes.

what happened?

Yes. I did, through the Red Cross. And by the way, the Red Cross, in recent years, contacted me again. And I, again, gave them whatever information I had, and nothing has ever come of it. My father, when he was taken to Lodz, the ghetto, he was in his middle-50s by then. And we knew he had developed a heart problem. And, of course, there was no medication. And I like to think he didn't last very long at all. I really think, and I hope, and I keep, that's what I always told myself that he died quickly. He was not well. And with those extreme conditions, my father was not an athlete in any sense of the word. And it was a typical city person. I don't think he would've done very well at that age, under those conditions. And my grandmother was in her 60s when she, and she had terrible asthma, always had had. And, of course, no medication, and I'm that sure that, that didn't help at all. And why the others didn't make it, I really don't know because they were fairly young and they were healthy. But they didn't. They didn't. The only ones who survived were the ones who were in Siberia. Despite the little medication that was available to them, they, at least, weren't mistreated. That was the difference.

While you were working in Germany, was your sister with you, at this time, also doing the same type of work?

Yeah, well, she was doing the translation work, and we went out in the same office. But, of course, we'd see each other quite a bit, off-and-on. We also had very busy social lives, and we didn't live with each other. So, we would see each other usually at lunch or at dinner or something in the mess hall. Or, we, well, and we're different. She dated different people. I dated different people. I'm younger than she is. And we didn't really run around with the same groups. We never did. So that sort of made a difference. She, subsequently, married a very nice young man, and whom she met there, and they live in Washington, D.C.

Do you see her very often?

Not too often, but I just saw them. And this is nice. Her daughter, who was not raised Jewish, but married a Jewish dentist, nonetheless, a nice young fellow, and this, their oldest son just had his bar mitzvah. And I went to her daughter's son's bar mitzvah. And so, did my daughter and son. So we were all there to join them, and it was lovely. It was really lovely. And in fact, I asked my sister if she remembered our cousin Rudi's bar mitzvah in Vienna, which was already during Hitler. And I remember it very well. She doesn't remember anything about it. So she has, she has done different. She has taken a different route. And obviously for her, that was necessary. And, but anyway, it's nice that her daughter is carrying on the tradition.

And how long did you stay on this job?

I worked in Germany from 1945, October '45 'til July '48. And then, I went back to England because I was coming to the States to get married.

Did you meet your current husband while you were in Germany working?

Yes, I did.

Can you tell me about that?

Yes. In fact, I alluded to this. A mutual friend of my sister's and mine, who was from Vienna, had gone to services in Frankfurt. The three of us were stationed in Frankfurt, and it was the Jewish Welfare Board who held these services in a little apartment, somebody's apartment. I have no idea whose it was. And there was several rabbis at the time, military, in Frankfurt, who would hold services. And I had sworn I was never gonna go to services again. But they started telling me about the type of things they're doing. They were working with the displaced persons in these camps, and they were, and I can say that now, and, of course, Yale knows more about this than I do. They were getting funds together and smuggling people out. Paying the Germans to smuggle people out to Israel. All the time. We didn't know about that. And I thought, "Well, they sound like good people. I think I'll go." So I went to services, and whom should I meet at services? Yale Trustin. And so, that's how we met. And then, we would, another wonderful program they started, the Jewish personnel and anyone else who would care to. We would go to the PX, like every Friday, and buy up soap, toothpaste, cigarettes, towels, whatever we thought these people really needed desperately. And then, one of the officers would get a truck and we'd all pile in, and we would go to one of the camps. And we would deliver whatever we could bring to them, and talk with them, and play with the children. There were lots. Surprisingly enough, there were quite a few children. In fact, I have some pictures of that, too. We did that every week. In fact, a wonderful story. There was a young fellow who was on one of the highways, and was trying to wave Yale down. He needed a ride. And, of course, being a typical, clean-cut, nice American kid, he stopped. And it happened to be a Jewish DP resident who needed to get back to camp. And his name was Jacob Stern. And he was going back to camp because his brother and his girlfriend were there, too. So, of course, Yale took them back, and he met the brother and his girlfriend. And I'll, if you want to, he'll tell the story. But the beautiful thing is we have been in, Yale was instrumental in getting these people to the United States. They settled in Hartford, Connecticut. They started working in a cleaners business, and eventually, built their own little business, and built several other little businesses. We saw them the last time, a couple of years ago. We went to visit them and met their son and daughter, who are two wonderful people. And it's really a beautiful story, and it makes you feel very good.

Well, what was Yale doing in Europe at that time?

Well, he was a pilot with the Air Force, and he was stationed at Rhein-Main, which was Frankfurt, in effect. And he had a civilian job as a civil engineer, which was his college degree, actually. But he also flew a lot of missions wherever they had to go. And so, he had a desk job as well as a flying job. And he got there shortly after the war. He was supposed to go to the Far East, but then, they had enough in the Far East and he was diverted to Europe. Otherwise, we wouldn't have met.

And his background, his educational background is what?

Well, he grew up in Omaha, and he finished high school here. And then he went to, he had an appointment to West Point. And he started, they were on a three-year program at that time because of the war. And, of course, they were all hoping they would still get in the war. And he entered in '42 and he graduated in June '45, which was right after the end of the war. And I don't know what month it was, probably June. He went to Germany, in Frankfurt, and he was stationed there the whole time. Well, while I was there and he was there.

Can you tell me about your first meeting with Yale?

Well, I remember the first time that preceded our first date. We were at one of our little get-togethers of this little Jewish military group. And somebody, somebody yelled out, "Buzz leaving for D gate." The D gate was what got you into the compound, where we all lived. And I thought somebody said, "A bus was going." So I said, "Well, I'm going." We had no transportation. So I'm going, and I see this funny little German car. And there was another young fellow in it whom I knew quite well. He was a German-Jewish boy who was in the military, and he says, "Oh, are you getting a ride with us? You wanna go to D Gate?" I said, "Sure." So, Buzz said, "Oh, I don't think I've met you." Or something. And so, we introduced each other. I don't think we had really met up to that point. And got in the car and were driving to the D gate. And on the way he said, "By the way, there's a party out at the club, Saturday night. Would you like to go?" And I thought, "Well, he looks like a nice fellow. Sure. Why not?" So what I found out after was there was no party at the club. He then had to go back to the base and quickly drum up a party, which was not hard to do because everybody wanted to have a party. Anyway, that was our first date. That was kind of funny.

Did you see each other often after that?

Yes. I think we started dating more often, quite soon after that. And we really dated for almost a year. And unless he was on a flight or something, we probably saw each other two or three times a week. And on the weekend, of course, too, because, then, he didn't have to work. He also played baseball and football on the Rhein-Main team. So, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of, and lots of good friends, all his classmates and their wives and friends. And we did a lot of wonderful, happy things together. Took some very nice trips. And it was a lovely three years after the war years and the Europe, it was, it was great.