Leviticus Family Interview

My name is Rachel Summers and I work with Dr. Beth Dotan as an intern researcher for the Nebraska Stories of Humanity. Today’s date is Tuesday August 22nd, 2023, and we are conducting this interview via Zoom. Thank you for participating in this interview as your insights will play a critical role in preserving the life and legacy of Louis Leviticus for future generations to learn from. I would like to invite Melanie Cohen and Amy Levy to introduce themselves and share their relationship with Lou. Melanie, would you please begin by introducing yourself?

Hi, yeah, as you said, my name is Melanie. My mom was Ru – we called him Rudi, but it was Louis - Lou’s husband, my stepfather, and my kids’ grandfather. They used to call him Grandpa Rudi, Papa Rudi, and there was never any difference between biological and non-biological. We all loved him. He was an extremely intelligent, wonderful man. He went through a lot of hardships in his life. We were very lucky to have known him. Very lucky to have known him. He knew my mom for years and years and years before they got married, when they were still just out of teenage years. They met here in Israel when they were in Kibbutz. And they stayed friends for years until my mum went to the States and they realized it was something more than just friendship. That was the beginning, basically.

That's beautiful. Amy, would you mind introducing yourself as well?

Sure, yeah. I'm Amy Levy, granddaughter of Rudi, Lou, who I called Grandpa Rudi. I'm one of four, and all four of us were pretty close to him. I would say that I was probably closer, just because, distance wise, I lived in New York and they were in Nebraska, so I got to communicate with them, my grandmother and him, more. But yeah, I never thought of him any differently than I did my biological grandfather.

That's awesome. So, the first question is, what memories do you all have of Lou, or Rudi?

Wow. From my perspective or my mom's perspective?

Your perspective would be awesome.

We first met Rudi when I was a little girl, and him and his second wife – he was married three times, so his second wife - and they came to the UK, and I remember meeting him there. Previous to that, when my mom had met him in Israel, he came to the UK – we're talking about back in the 1950s – and he met my grandmother, my grandfather, and they thought of him as like a son. Always. Even though there was no romantic, nothing between my mom and Rudi at that time. They were just very good friends, who, at the time, people used to do pen...pen friends, pen pals. And that’s what, my mom got married and Rudi got married and they had kids, and they still wrote to each other all the time. So we’ve always known about Rudi and his kids from when we were kids. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t know about my mom’s friend Rudi. When we were little, we didn’t really understand what had happened to him, you know, and it was only really not that long ago, really, that he came to terms with it himself and started to open up about what happened. But he was, we’d learn a lot from him. And learned a lot about him. Probably in the last twenty years of his life, we learned a lot about him. And I think when you learn about what happened to him, you get to understand what made him the way he was. And what shaped him as a person. He was a good man. A good man, yeah. Funny. Could be funny, could be very strict. He was a good man.

I think my memories of him kind of shift as my age shifted. So, when I was younger, myself and my brother would go to Nebraska to visit them. Was it like, what, once a year? No, we went like once when...

You went a couple of times.

A couple of times. Once when I was around eight, maybe?

Yeah, you were eight.

And the other time when I was a teenager, about fourteen. I don’t specifically remember that trip. But they took us all over, all over the Midwest. We went to Yellowstone, and I remember him taking us around and he just seemed to know everything. I was actually talking about this with my mom today. He seemed to know everything about everything. Every plant, what we could eat, what we couldn’t eat from the plant. He would pick stuff off, and then he would kind of somewhat mention bits about his past, how he knew what to eat because he had to learn that himself. And I remember specific things that he used to - it sounds stupid - he told my brother when he finished using his bathroom to light a match and leave it in the toilet. Things like that that I still remember, but he just seemed to know everything about everything. Any question we had, he would know the answer to. And he was a lot more...he was strict, but I also feel that he was...my grandmother was very strict, and he was a little more...I guess he had experienced more in his life so he could understand more teenage behavior than she did. I remember breaking out of their house when I was fourteen, sneaking out the window, and he was...he kind of made a lot of jokes about it, whereas my grandma didn’t find it funny. He was kind of the funnier character. But, loads of good memories. Like my mom said, he didn’t really start to open up about his story until after I had read his book and I had questions, so I would ask him questions here and there and he would tell me about his story, but before then, I really didn’t know much about it. He was kind of a closed book.

Yeah, I think at some stage about twenty years ago, my mum started saying to him, “Rudi, you’ve got to tell your story, because if you don’t tell your story, nobody will know.” And then, he had to – as far as I remember, he had a friend called Ben, who was a, I think, a pharmacist or doctor in Nebraska as well who’d also been through something similar. They were invited, or they, I don’t remember exact details, but they ended up doing something with Steven Spielberg. Do you remember what that was? Steven Spielberg with the Holocaust memories of people, because people were getting older, and they were scared that what would happen is that they would get to a stage where everybody would have passed away and nobody would have a record of anything. And he went there, and they recorded something there, so we know that his story was there. And then afterwards, people asked him to talk with the schools. You must have been at a high school. And are you from Nebraska?

I am not, but I'm from Kansas.

Oh, okay. And then he started talking with the high schools, and then he realized he was good at that, and the kids were listening. Then it became easier to talk about it, and then my kids were not allowed to read the book until they were a certain age.

Till they were eighteen.

Yeah, to read what was in the book. It’s kind of a bit surreal when you think, this was actually real. This happens. It’s not a story. And it makes you think about him in completely different lives. You can’t put the two together. You can’t see one was Lou and one was Rudi, and it was just very strange.

The one thing I always found amazing about him is, I remember asking him once, we were speaking about the conflict in Israel. Middle Eastern conflict, and I remember asking him a question about, he must feel like he hates Germany for what he went through. And he didn't have any hate in his heart for anybody. It almost made him research things more. He had read the Qur'an, he had read every religious text, and I don’t know that that was for his own knowledge and it just...

He wasn't religious.

No.

The opposite. Not at all.

He didn't harbor any ill feeling towards any group of people, or any country, or anything after what he had been through, and I always found that quite amazing.

Thank you so much, that was really, really moving. I can tell you guys obviously were very connected to him. Just to kind of backtrack a little bit, get a little more background, you guys have mentioned that you did refer to him by the nickname Rudi. Why is that? Is there background on that?

What happened is that, when the Nazis came for his family, he ran into the forest in the Netherlands, and he was taken in eventually by a devout catholic family who adopted him. Not legally, but as their own. And in order for him to stay with them, he had to have a name that wasn’t like, Louis Leviticus, you know. So, they’d taken a birth certificate of a young boy that had died called Rudi. From then on, he was known as Rudi. When he went to school, when he went anywhere, his name was Rudi. And Louis never...there wasn’t a Louis the whole way through the war, through everything. There was no Louis. My mom in Israel knew him only as Rudi. It was only when he came to the States that he took his name back.

So just to clarify, you guys all still called him Rudi, but I think professionally, at least in Nebraska, he was still known as Lou?

When my mom was twenty, it was a big thing in the UK for people to go...Jewish people to come to Israel, right at the beginning of the state in Israel, and help build the Kibbutzim. You know what the Kibbutz is? You know Kibbutz. So, my mom came from the UK with a few other girls, and they travelled through London on a boat, six weeks on a boat to come to Israel. And she was on a couple of Kibbutzim, and then she stayed with her aunt for a while, and there was a Kibbutz that was attached to the land, and all the kids their age, they kind of got together in the evening, and one of the boys that was working on the tractor was Rudi. Lou, sorry. And they got together and they became friends. And I’ve actually got a picture, I think I sent it to Beth, of them all sitting on a tractor back in 1952. It’s amazing. And after ten months, my mom went back to the UK. Rudi got remarried, my mom got married, they had more kids, my mom had my sister. And like I said, they still wrote and were friends and came to Israel. I think it was in about 1960 something, he was in...(14:50) after he’d done his Master's or his PhD, they offered him to come to Nebraska to the tractor - no, no, he went to Purdue first. Purdue? And then they sent him eventually to Nebraska to do the agriculture engineering that he was doing. He was supposed to have come back to Israel, but he never did. He ended up in Nebraska for, gosh, how many years, Beth? Fifty years?

Probably forty, fifty years.

Long time. And he loved it there. He loved it because of the agriculture, because of the fields and the farming, and that was just his thing. And then, my mom went over to see him. He was on his own, my mom was on his own, and then he called and said, “Come, I want you to be with me.” And she did, and she left the UK and went to live with him, and that was the best decision she’s ever made. She had the most wonderful life there. Apart from it being a beautiful place, I loved it there. A beautiful place, Nebraska. And they just felt at home. Just felt at home there, found a community.

He took me and my brother to tractor museum, and we were like, “Oh God, why are we going to a tractor museum,” but he made it fun. He was so enthusiastic about everything there. He made it interesting.

And my younger two siblings as well, they went to Nebraska a few times and he always took them to the tractor museum. It was also like his way out, to get a McDonalds without my mom seeing. He used to say, “I’m off to the tractor museum.” He used to love McDonalds, or Tacos, or something.

He would hide the cookies and stuff. She would only allow him to have...

Healthy foods.

Yeah. He always had secret stashes. Even before he passed, he would hide those Tootsie Rolls. She didn't know he had a secret stash. This is when he was hooked up to oxygen and everything, and he still had them.

He was such a character. Such a character. What he knew was so broad. We used to listen to choral music, the choral music they sang in the churches. And he just used to…and in another breath, it would be jazz. He just knew about so many different things. It was unbelievable. And I remember asking him once, “how do you know how to speak so many languages?” He could speak French, and German, and Dutch, and English, and Hebrew, and everything.

Yiddish.

Yiddish, so many different, I said, “how do you know how to speak so many languages?” And he said that during the war, when they were in his parents’ house, all they had was a radio. And they used to be able to tune into different channels. One evening, he’d be able to get music from Paris, and one, he’d be able to get something from Belgium, and one thing from Germany. And he just picked up the languages. He was just a natural with languages. It was just incredible. We could learn a language for ten years and only manage to speak two sentences.

I think that's also why my grandma was in awe of him so much, because he was so knowledgeable on everything, and you could tell she was just in awe every time he would speak about something he knows about. You would see it on her face.

She definitely helped him to come out of his comfort zone, in talking about the Holocaust. I think otherwise, he would have just gone to his grave without saying anything. So, she encouraged him to write the book.

And it took him a long time to write that book. Years. I remember him telling me he just couldn’t put it on the paper for such a long time. He would start and he would just not finish it, and he would start again, and it took him years and years and years to even write the book.

Yeah. And they had to order in the wrong order, and the publisher kept on sending it back, and he kept on redoing it. But it was like therapy for him, I think. He actually had to write it down and had to think about it. I think for him, it was a really good thing to have done. Tell us if we’re getting off track.

We're going on multiple topics.

We're starting to babble

No, no. Honestly, you guys are answering a lot of questions that we already have, which is awesome, so, that’s really amazing, but to kind of transition into asking more about experiences during the war. Although this interview is about your memories of Lou, could you briefly tell us about Rose’s experiences during World War II?

When I did speak to him about it, he said at the time it was like an adventure for him. He never thought about it as being what happened to his parents. To him, he was a young boy, he was eleven. He was in the forest, playing in the forest. I don’t think he ever thought about the danger of everything. He was very lucky that he met this family who’d taken him in. They were called, what were they called, Gentile? This family that took him in, they’re actually honored in Yad Vashem as honorable gentiles? For doing what they’d done, they’d taken in a Jewish boy. Cause a lot of people didn’t want to know. They were too scared to, they were afraid the Nazis were going to come. And he always thought of that family as his family. Even when he was here, when he was in Nebraska, he was in touch with them constantly. And when the father eventually died, he was devastated. They were a very young couple when they took him in. They hadn’t had any children. So he was like their first son, although there wasn’t that much difference in their age groups. And all the subsequent kids they had -- and there was about eight of them, they were a big Catholic family – he thought of them as his brothers and sisters. He was in touch with all of them, and some of them came over to Nebraska to visit him at different times.

He called them his family.

His family. Yeah. Cause he had no idea - he didn't know about what happened to his family and he was an only child - about his parents until years and years after the war had finished. He didn't know. So he was completely on his own from when he was eleven, except for this family. All of them. And he occasionally would say things to us - it was never all in one go - that horses are his friends because he, you carry on.

Yeah, I remember he loved horses too. He took us to a cowboy ranch actually. He loved the horses. When I asked him questions about the war, I remember once I had picked something up in his book, it was when he shot a Nazi when they came and invaded the house, if I remember correctly.

He shot the Nazi or he stabbed the Nazi, one of the soldiers. That was right at the end of the book, wasn't it? Is that right?

No, it was right in the middle. Anyway, so I remember asking him, how as a child did you do that to an adult soldier? He was really matter-of-fact about it, like "I had to do what I had to do." And even when you would speak to him, he was always very controlled in his responses. You could tell that it was just something he had to do. So I remember asking him questions after I had read the book about his experiences and his answers weren't ever really drawn out. He kind of just got to the point and that was it.

Yeah, he said the horses were his friends because the horses saved him. He used to hide in the stables under the hay and the horses would protect him. He felt like he could talk to the horses, communicate with the horses, and keep him safe. So, he always had this affinity with them. He loved wildlife.

That was a huge part of his life and it was definitely connected.

His whole life was really agriculture and farming. A very clever man. Very clever man. When we were younger, my mom used to tell us stories that her friend Rudi was helping to design for the moon buggy that went to the moon, and for us as kids, we were like, "Rudi designed, he got that part for the moon," and it was so exciting that he could do something like that. I think my grandma reveled in his glory, didn't she? She really did.

She was so proud about that.

So proud of him. She was so proud that he'd gone to talk in the schools and students would actually listen to him and they liked him and they called back. She was so proud of him, really. She never got over him dying. I don't think she ever came to terms with it.

Those are really the war stories that - they didn't speak about it that much.

He would tell us before the war, when he lived in, it wasn’t actually Amsterdam, it was another place, and then he was at school, and they had to wear yellow badges. All the Jews had to wear yellow badges. In the same school in his year was Anne Frank’s sister, Margot. He used to tell us those stories about other kids, and they used to go to school and then one day, one of the kids wasn’t at school, and the next day, two kids weren’t at the school. He never thought about it until much later in his life, what was happening to the kids. How they were just disappearing. He said that his father literally shoved him out of the back window. When the lock came on the door, they literally shoved him out the window. He instinctively knew just to run. I don’t even think when you’re eleven you know what you’re running to, or from, but he just...who knows what those kids went through? It must have been just awful. And then after the war, they went into, all the Jewish kids, they ended up into an orphanage and they weren’t treated very nicely in the orphanage at all by the religious Jews that were there. I think that really turned him off of being Jewish. Really turned him the other way. Then they sent them all to Israel, and he ended up on Kibbutzs in Israel, when he was, I think, seventeen?

Can you clarify what happened with his transfer to the orphanage? Why wasn’t he able to stay with the Catholic family?

Because they took all the Jewish kids and they...I don’t really know why, but he ended up in the, I think by that time, they’d already had four or five kids of their own, and I think that’s just what everybody’d done. I think they thought they were going to rehome them or find their parents. After the war finished, you don’t know what they...I don’t really know why. There is a picture, I’ll find it. When I was going through my Mum’s things, I found a picture of all the little kids that were at the orphanage, and I looked at it, and I tried to look for it now and I can’t remember where I put it, but I will find it and send it to you. So, his first wife was actually one of the girls that was in the orphanage with him, and they all went to Beit HaEmek. That was the Kibbutz where they all were. And they married each other so they could extend the Kibbutz. You know what it was like. I think he enjoyed himself in Israel, he enjoyed his life as a young guy in Israel. He was lucky to...I remember him saying, when we came here and my two girls, you were twelve, they didn’t speak any Hebrew. They were learning, and Grandpa Rudi used to say to them – he was seventeen, and when he was doing his exams here, in order to get, what do they call it at seventeen, a high school diploma or whatever you call it. It’s the same. He had to literally sit with a dictionary and translate every word in order to...so he must have been super clever in order to not only do that in a language he didn’t know, but also to get a doctorate. It was quite amazing. He was in the army, and he was with a lot of very important people in the army.

I just wanted to ask if, obviously it does seem he was really close to his adoptive family, but did he ever really talk much about his biological family or finding out what happened about his parents?

No. I mean, we know who they were. We know their names. And he occasionally would tell us little bits about his mom or his dad. I think cause he was eleven, I don’t think he remembered that much. Without him even realizing it, he must have been so traumatized by everything that he must have just blocked it out. This family, what was his name...they kind of became his family. He was always in touch with them, always. He would say, “I’m going to the Netherlands, I’m going to visit his family.” That was his family. I’m sure that as he got older, he must’ve been very upset about his parents because it wasn’t only his parents that were taken, it was his whole family. There was nobody left. Except for one cousin. He was quite resilient, wasn’t he? I think a lot of people of that age were just very resilient, and they just got on with it.

He really made the most of the life he had.

For sure. Is there anything else that he had told you about his childhood in the Netherlands, or anything before the war? Or is it kind of blocked out?

He was very naughty, and very badly behaved. He used to get into a lot of trouble. I think you have a photo there, he’s got a very cheeky face. He must have been about eight or nine. He was always getting into trouble. Always chasing the little girls that were there. Nothing really changed as he got older, he stayed the same. He didn’t say so much about what happened in his early years. I think that’s out of choice. Some things he probably kept to himself. He didn’t tell us much about what happened before that time. I think it just must’ve been too painful.

That makes sense. I can’t even imagine, so, thank you. Just to keep going, it does say in his book that he did get a chance to travel back to his home in the Netherlands. He had hidden photos in the walls. Did he ever share anything about what that was like for him?

Amy has a different story as well to tell as well, but I remember him saying he remembered that his mother had sent to him that she was hiding him something in the stairs. They had stairs and she took a slat in the stairs, and years and years later, probably in the 1980s or something, the 1990s, he’d gone back to the Netherlands and he’d actually gone to the house and he’d knocked on the door of the house - this is the story that Rudi told us, I don’t know whether he’d swapped things or he got confused or – and he told the people who he was and they let him come into the house and he actually found his parents - his mother had hidden candlesticks and she’d hidden something that Amy...

Mortar.

Yeah. Mortar. He’d taken that and that’s all that was left from his family. He’d obviously taken them back to Nebraska. And nine-year-old Amy begged him for it.

Yeah. I remember asking him, what is that, and he told me the story behind it. My mom actually jogged my memory of the story. I know he went back to the home and that was one of the things that was left. I was fascinated by it, so I remember asking him, “can I have that?” He was always a bit...I don’t know, he wasn’t really sure if I should have it. I remember when he was sick, I asked him again and I finally did a whole speech as to how I would look after it and take care of it and he was more than happy for me to take it. But it’s definitely something that I really cherish. That, and also a vase. The Hungarian government gave him this vase. I took pictures and sent them to Beth. That was another thing that was really special to him that I ended up being given.

What’s the story behind the vase?

The Hungarian government gave it to him. As a Holocaust survivor.

No, I think he’d done some work with them, and he’d gone there for something.

No, it was something to do with the Holocaust survivors, and the government was apologizing to them or something, and he was gifted this vase by them. So yeah, I have that as well. It’s really beautiful. But the mortar and pestle was the thing that just...when I look at it now, it gives me chills thinking about it.

Cause he came out with nothing. He didn’t have anything, and to find something that his Mum had used in the kitchen, it’s surreal, really.

I was honored to be able have it.

I’m pleased Amy’s got that, because he doesn’t have his own...his two sons, unfortunately, have died. And one daughter that he wasn’t in touch with. At least, I know Amy’s told stories to her children, and it won’t die. It’s something that’s always going to be in the family. Even though he wasn’t biologically our grandfather, it didn’t really make a difference. It’s his story.

You guys have kind of touched on this already, but what was Lou’s relationship to Judaism after the war?

He wasn't big on any, he felt that religion was...

Overrated.

Yeah, it was used to suppress people almost, and to enforce rules he didn’t believe should be rules in the first place.

I think being in the orphanage where he was, and the way they were treated. He told us stories that they would hardly have anything to eat, and they would have horrible things to wear. When somebody would come, an official, they would make sure all the kids had a bath, had to share a bath, and they would put proper clothes on them and there was food. But in between those times, there was nothing, he said. It was awful. He thought that if Orthodox people who were supposed to have morals and standards could do that, then religion was not worth anything.

Didn't he say he was an atheist?

I think he might detest all religions.

He was interested in the history of the religions, but he didn’t like that people were following those morals. I remember when we went out to eat with him in Nebraska, and he was eating a clam chowder soup or something. I remember saying we can’t have that because it’s not kosher. And he thought the kosher rule was BS. So stupid, you can’t eat things cause they’re not kosher. He didn’t like that people were following these rules. He was always really interested in the history of multiple religions, not just one. He seemed to know about all of them in depth.

That makes sense. So, to skip ahead a little bit about his time in Nebraska, what memories or sentiments did Lou ever share with you guys about his connection to Nebraska?

He loved Nebraska. He spoke about Nebraska like it was this golden place on Earth. He loved the agriculture. He used to talk to us about cornfields. He took us to the cornfields a bunch of times. He just loved it. He loved the people, he was like this mini celebrity in his community.

He loved it.

He loved it, yeah. It was really positive.

Maybe it reminded him of home. I don’t know. Like in the fields and stuff, I don’t know. He just loved it there. That was his home. The people from that area, in Lincoln, they were more than friends to him. He didn’t want to be anywhere else. That was where he wanted to be.

Could you speak more on his role in the community in Lincoln?

From what aspect?

His time at the tractor museum? We also saw that he and Rose were involved in community theater a bit at one time.

I don’t know too much about that. Actually, Beth will probably know a lot more than us because she was there. She lived there. But I don’t know, my mom liked the idea of being in a community theater. She’d done the reading, cause she had a British accent. She’d done the reading for something called The Train or something. I think it was The Train. Rudi, Lou, had a party. He loved it. He was very outgoing. He loved it.

I could see grandma laughing at it.

Oh, yeah. My mom reveled in him being, like, a mini celebrity. I remember when he talked at the, I remember going to see him at the Lincoln Memorial, during the Holocaust Day, Memorial Day. I was crying, but she cried I think every day. She was just so proud of him, that he got up there told his story. The things they did day-to-day, I don’t know. Because we never lived there, so I don’t really know. But there are a lot of people there that would be able to tell you more about his day-to-day life, the waiting season, how things were there. We only knew what he told us. We didn’t know from firsthand experience.

I have to tell you that, when we went to the tractor museum with the students last week, the gentleman who runs the place and sort of turned it into museum quality – because when Rudi was there, he just had this building and didn’t have money to turn it into a museum, he just created something out of nothing, as he did. But this person knew about your mom and that she had just passed away. There’s this connection to this engineering, agriculture engineering department that still remains, and is very connected to his work.

That’s really nice. That’s lovely. My mom loved it there as well. She really did, it’s like she left her London lifestyle that she’d been through everything in the war and the way that she was, and she moved to something so completely different. Apart from the weather being so completely different, I mean, it took her quite a while to get used to the Nebraskan winters, and then the very hot, sweaty summers. But she loved it there. I think that if she was okay, I think she would have liked to stay in Nebraska and not come here.

She was sad to leave.

She was sad to leave, and she never ever talked about it after she left. Never talked about Nebraska after she left. It’s like she just blocked it from her mind.

Well, that was just Grandma. Cutting it off.

Yeah. I used to show them, every week, I used to show them pictures of when she was, when they were, what was it called, prairie? Wherever they lived. I can’t remember. Where did they live in the, just, in the house where they lived. What was it called? It was a retirement home that they lived in.

I remember speaking to her before she moved to Israel and she was sad to leave Nebraska. She was sad to leave the people that she had there.

Friends.

Yeah, the friends and the home. That was her whole life. She was sad, but the passing of Grandpa Rudi just, she wasn’t the same after that.

She started to go.

Deteriorating.

I think she spent such a lot of time looking after Rudi, after Lou, that she kind of neglected that things weren’t going quite a hundred percent with herself. So, by the time she came to here, I remember Rudi found her not the way it should have been. Which is sad. Rudi used to show her pictures and she would show pictures of Rudi, or pictures of, I don’t know if you know Sharon. Did you know Sharon? She had a friend Sharon, and lots of people that were there. Her face used to light up. I said, “Do you remember this? Do you remember going in this fancy dress? Do you remember this friend?” And she used to nod, and sometimes her eyes used to light up. Sad. Very sad.

She’d be so happy that we’re talking to you though.

This would be...when Beth asked if we’d be interested in talking to you, and I asked my mom. I went there, this was only about a month before she passed away. I showed her the piece of paper which she had to give her consent, and I explained that Rudi’s name would be, not immortalized, but it would be forever, people would know this story and what happened. And she just burst into tears. And I said, “do you give your consent?” She nodded the hardest nod that she’s ever nodded since she’s been here. Like I said to Beth, I’m just so happy that it happened before she died. So she knew about it. It’s a big thing.

Yeah.

Sorry we don’t have too much information to give you.

No, that’s okay. You’ve honestly been so amazing. Thank you for just even answering any of these questions. I did want to ask, Amy, Beth mentioned that you’re an English teacher and that you teach Lou’s book in your class. Can you share how your students react to his story?

I don’t teach his full book, I take excerpts from it. Only because we have to obviously teach what is aligned to the curriculum. So, I teach Elie Wiesel’s memoir, and then I always tell the students that, I preface it with, my grandfather was in the Holocaust. This is something that’s very sensitive for me. And then, I’ll share excerpts from his book. It’s difficult because they listen and they’re always shocked, but kids today can’t fathom that this happened. To them, it’s so far-fetched. It always helps when I tell them his story, because they know that, “oh, her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, so it makes it more real.” And they’re always really shocked. I’ll say to them, “can you imagine at eleven years old, he’s having to eat raw eggs just to survive?” Or I take those moments from his book and share it with them, it’s like an imagery thing, so they can have that picture in their heads. Every year I use it, and every year, the kids are shocked at the things he went through.

Do you talk about him, sorry to interrupt, do you talk about him serving with the Underground in the Netherlands?

Do I talk about him?

In the book, and when he used to speak to children, he would talk about how he helped with the Underground.

No, I don’t really. I’m trying to think. Each year is different. Each year, it kind of depends on, when it comes to teaching, on what the kids in the class are gravitating to between the two books. Then, I kind of just go on a whim and explain whatever it is that they’re actually interested in. So no, I can’t say specifically that, but a lot of other details from his book, we speak about. And I always tell them about the mortar and pestle that we got from his mother, too. That’s something that we mention in class. An hour for them is a lifetime.

That makes sense. Two final questions, if you guys have time. Are there any other ways that you all try to keep Lou’s memory alive within your family, within your communities, or share his story?

With the book, we’ve handed it out to so many people who have read it, and when they realize we’re related, it’s not just a story, not just another Holocaust book. People who like it, they’re amazed. Because it’s written very simply. English wasn’t Lou’s first language, so it’s written very simply. I think that actually helps to make it very real. I’ve had some of my friends who’ve brought it back, they’ve been crying, because it’s really touched them. We have things. I’ve got my father on the wall, I’ve got a picture of Rudi, of Lou, on the wall. People say, “who’s that?” And I never say it’s my stepfather. I say that’s Rudi, that’s my father. The kids know. The grandchildren know. His great-grandchildren know. I remember when Ken, who’s my oldest son, they moved to Minnesota. And they’ve had their little girl. He drove from Minnesota to Nebraska to show Grandpa Rudi his new great-grandchild. I’ve got photos of them, and he was so happy. So happy that he’s got not only a grandson, but a great-granddaughter. I think, I mean he never actually said, but I think it feels like it wasn’t all in vain. He has a continuation, something else that will tell the story for him. Everybody knows him. She tells her kids, “This is Grandpa Rudi. Grandpa Rudi showed me how to do this.” He’ll never be a strange name, or my mother’s husband. It’s not like that. We’ll keep his name alive, always. We don’t really think about it, even with them, not being here anymore. It’s like they’re just far away.

Just one final thing. Is there anything that you guys feel like you want to share before the interview is over that we didn’t really cover? Anything you want people to know from watching this interview about Rudi?

It’s just nice that people will think of him as a real person. That he was a naughty schoolboy, and he wasn’t just this old man that became a professor. He was a person that had been through so many different things in his life. So many different ages, really. From being a happy-go-lucky kid with parents and everything to having no parents to being adopted. Different countries. And finally finding the place where he really felt at home, which was Nebraska. That’s very comforting, to know that he found a home after everything was taken away from him. He found a home.

Thank you guys so much. That was absolutely beautiful to hear from you guys, and we appreciate so much of your time. I know you guys probably don’t get to spend a ton of time together, so we appreciate so much that you were willing to take an hour out of it to just talk to us and tell us about Rudi and Rose. Beth, do you have anything?

No, I just want you to know that we will continue to keep Rudi’s memory and legacy alive, and Rose as well. We’re so fortunate that we’ve reconnected and we’re able to do this at this time.

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

We’re really happy that it’s going to be continued.

And he will know. He will know. He’ll be looking down on us thinking, ah. Beth’s doing it. She’s arranged it. Cause he liked your husband, didn’t he. He got on very well with your husband.

He loved to speak to my husband about the Israeli army and the Yom Kippur war. I think that, with the challenges that he had with his memories of Israel, those were the places where he was most proud to talk about his life there. He would love to speak to my husband in Hebrew. They would invite us for meals and Rudi would insist that it was okay if we didn’t eat kosher, but Rose wanted to have everything kosher because we were coming over.

That’s my mum. They were a good balance for each other. My mum was like this, and Rudi was somewhere in the middle. They came together and it balanced each other out a little bit.

She kept him in shape.

Oh, did she ever.

Physically and mentally, yes.

I was about to say.

That was good. A good combination, I think.

Without a doubt. I’m just going to turn the recording off here, real quick.