Pawtuxet Valley Historian Volume 14, Issue 4 Lou Maynard introduced Marla Dansky, Executive Director of the R.I. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Alice Goldstein, a demographer, historian and senior researcher at Brown University's Population Studies Training Center.

Ms. Goldstein shared with us her family's experiences in Nazi Germany just before the beginning of WWII. How a series of small steps beginning with the erosion of civil liberties and economic freedoms lead to the denial of the right to live to a large segment of the population.

She was born in a small village in the Black Forest of Germany where her family lived since the early 18th century and where her ancestors owned a small retail notions shop, which was passed on from generation to generation. Her father and three of his brothers served in the German army in WWI. When the war ended Germany was defeated and was in a downward spiral economically. Ten years later there was the great depression. In 1932 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and he blamed the Jews for all the misfortune that had befallen the country. He spread the propaganda that they were undermining the welfare of all the people. It started with the little things such as being barred from belonging to athletic clubs. Then in 1934 the Nuremberg laws were passed which deprived the Jews of all their civic and most of their economic rights. Jewish stores were boycotted. By 1937 most of the Jewish owned stores had gone out of business. For observant Jews there were no more butchers to prepare kosher meat. They became vegetarians. Children were not allowed to attend public school. The synagogues set up schools and taught Hebrew and English hoping that eventually all the children would go to the United States or to Palestine.

In 1938 there was a big pogrom against the Jews. Kristellnacht, and all of the Jewish males were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Her father was there for six weeks. At that point Hitler was not ready to exterminate all the Jews. He wanted to get rid of them and was willing to let them leave the country. Her family had started planning to leave and had applied for a visa to the United States in 1936 but it was very difficult. You had to have someone sponsor you, then you had to cerify that you were completely up to date in your tax payments and that you were a good citizen, although you were no longer a citizen and you had to buy a ticket even though you didn't know when you were leaving. This was all after a perios of boycott when most Jews were just barely managing to get by. Her family finally got their visas and arrived in the United States in August of 1939. Ms. Goldstein feels that she is extremely fortunate to have made that boat.

Thinking back on her experience she cautions that we must be ever wary of infringements on our liberties and that we must value people no matter who they are. She ended on a brighter note that even in that most terrible time there were a few people who were not swayed by the propaganda. They did not stand by and watch helplessly but tried to correct the evil that was being done to other human beings.

The R.I. Holocaust Memorial Museum is located at 401 Elmgrove Ave. in Providence. Archival material, historic information and exhibits, a large lending library of videos and books, and a photography exhibit are available to the public. Tel. 401-453-7860 for more information.

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