The Holocaust Memorial museum. My name is bill benson and im the host of the museums Public Program firstperson, thank you for joining us today. We are in the 20th year of the First Person Program and the first person today is mrs. Door clayman who we will meet shortly. This 2019 season is made possible by the generosity of the lewis frank and Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Arlene Fisher foundation the first person is a series of twiceweekly conversations with survivors of the holocaust who share with us their firsthand accounts of their experience during the holocaust each of our first person gas serves as a volunteer here at the museum. The program will continue until august 8. The museums website provides information about each of the up coming firstperson guests. Theodore will share with us or firstperson account of her experience during the holocaust and as a survivor for about 45 minutes. If we have time towards the end of the program that we will have the opportunity for you to ask questions. If we dont get to your question today, please join us in our online conversation never stop asking why, the conversation aims to inspire individuals to ask the important questions that holocaust history raises. You can ask your question and tag your museum on twitter, facebook and instagram using at Holocaust Museum and the ask why. A recording of this program will be made available on the museums youtube page, please visit the firstperson website listed on the back of the program for more details. What you are about to hear from dora is one individuals account of the holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with her introduction. Door clayman who was born on generally 31st 1938 unit yugoslavia, presentday croatia. Here we see dora sitting on a park bench with her younger brother. On this map of yugoslavia in 1933, the arrow points to zagreb. In this photo we see dora on an outing to the zoo with her parents, solomon ran a brush making factory and silva was a teacher. Pictured here is her maternal grandfather. In april 1931 when she was visiting her maternal grandparents in a small town , germany invaded yugoslavia. This became part of a puppet state run by the croatian fascist. Her parents and brother were arrested in the housekeeper was able to get the infant out of prison and from then on they were sheltered by their mothers sister and on the left we see her on 10 on the right we see her husband in this photo taken many years later. We close with this portrait of dora and her aunt and uncle that was taken to be sent to her father after he was arrested in in the concentration camp. In 1943, her aunt was denounced and sent to our switch where she perished. Dora remained in yugoslavia until 1957 and in 1958, immigrated to the United States. In 1957 while on her way to switzerland, dora met Daniel Clayman who was returning to a postdoctoral study as a fulbright scholar in india. They were married in switzerland a year later and together they arrived in the United States in the fall of 1958. The following year they came to washington d. C. And dan began his career as a researcher in medicinal chemistry at the Walter Reed Army institute of research. His work culminated in his expertise in Drug Development against malaria. After the birth of their two children, wanda and elliott, dora resumed her education getting degrees in french and in teaching english as as anguish language. She then taught in montgomery Public Schools including 23 years at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School where she headed the english as a second language department. Dan passed away in 1992. Both of their children live in the Washington Area wanda is Deputy Director of an International Association that deals with transportation issues. Elliott is a freelance videographer and owns a video and Film Production company he is married and they have three children ages 24, 22 and 15. After dora retired from full time teaching in 1999, she became active as a volunteer with this museum. Her work here consist primarily of translating and helping to Research Material from the holocaust, written in croatian the bosnian in serbian. Her original project was connected to the onset of its archive, as we will hear later this was a major concentration camp in croatia. Other projects have included the translation of a booklet that accompanied a 1942 anti semitic exhibiting croatia and the translation of the captions on a large archive of photographs that had been gathered during the postworld war ii trials in yugoslavia. To add to her language skills, dora continues to learn hebrew and enjoys traveling and has been to israel seven times were she was happy to reunite with her cousins and their families. Some of her travels are connected to learning more about the events in the aftermath of the holocaust. She has attended several conferences of the International Organization of child survivors, including in poland and in 2011 when she visited our switch for the first time and in berlin in 2014, where she was impressed by the effort made by the country to teach about and to remember the holocaust. In 2013 she visited the memorial site of the infamous concentration camp yes in a thats where most of her family perished. Last summer she returned to croatia at this time visiting the cemetery at the former concentration camp of to kobo. Most comedy the side of her mothers death. She speaks publicly in other settings and as well as local schools and the facility and most recently in lewis delaware. Please join me in welcoming our firstperson mrs. Dora klayman. [ applause ] dora thank you for joining us and being willing to be our firstperson today. Thank you. So you have so much to share with us in our short one hour together, less than that now so we will get right to it. You were three years old when world war ii came directly to yugoslavia in the spring of 1941 , when it was attacked by germany. Before we turn to the horrors of the war in the holocaust to start first by telling us about your family and your community in the years before the war. So, my family hadnt been in croatia for really long time when the war actually happened, and by very long time i mean not for generations. My father was actually born in romania but they immigrated into yugoslavia when he was a very young child. Then they settled but my mothers family came to a small town on the far north near the hungarian border and they came so that my grandfather could serve as rabbi to the small Jewish Community that was there. They actually came from slovakia and when they arrived they had two children and then they had two more including my mother who was the youngest. By the time the war started, my grandfather had been the rabbi of that community for 40 years so, they had been living there for a long time, just not for generations by the time war came around all of the children of my mothers family had been working and my mother in particular, became a teacher, an Elementary School teacher and then married my father and they moved to zagreb. The other children in the family , especially important members of the family to me were my mothers sister blanche, who was married and had two children and the sister who is older and he was actually born outside of croatia, who arrived with the parents early on. She was 15 years older than my mother so she was almost a quasimother to my mother and she played a very large role and she is the one whos the picture you showed, and giza expect then my mother, she very much took care of my mother and eventually took care of me. My father ran the factory of brushes, he learned the craft and then started the business of his own and then by the time the war started there were about 12 workmen prospering and that is more or less the family. You explained that in your mothers hometown, that this had been an integrated community, what did you mean by that . Well, i mean that there was actually some but very little in comparison to other places. People prospered. My grandfather had only minor events that would be labeled as anti semitic events when he served as a translator in the court for german and hungarian and he also taught jewish children in the religious classes they had in the Elementary School, so the Elementary School children had a religious education as part of their day and the Catholic Priest and the orthodox minister was there and my grandfather then taught the jewish children. So the Jewish Community was rather small but fairly wellto do and they were either storeowners or there was a lawyer, a doctor and cut the interesting thing is you can take a look at pictures Available Online of that community. There are tennis clubs and jews and catholics are playing together and this is practically a 90 or 100 Roman Catholic world and there were some serbian orthodox villages around their but generally this is a catholic world but there was social integration and certainly Economic Division i think you for explaining that, when germany launched his attack on yugoslavia on april 6, 1941, you were away visiting relatives, tell us what you can about what you know about the circumstances as to why you were away from your family and what happens when the germans came into yugoslavia . I was away because i was two years old and my parents had just had a never baby, my brother, he was three years younger, we were both born in january, three years apart, neighbor from ludbreg came to visit and my parents decided to send me to visit with my grandparents because it was an opportunity to get me on the train and i have that image, be on the train was very exciting even though i was very young, i remember. So i still dont know, actually why i was sent. Did they know . They all knew the war was a minute but i dont really think that was the reason they sent me. I think they sent me to visit grandparents and aunts and so on and the other one possibly because my mother just had a baby so it was a good thing to send me away for a bit of time. So, i just happened to be at my grandparents that april when germany invaded. Second let me jump in for a minute, you said they knew the war was probably imminent, to your parents or other members of the family, did anyone make attempts to try to leave yugoslavia before the germans came in . Not before. There was actually no place to go, that was the problem and thats what were talking about a lot these days, why didnt you leave but there was no place to go. That was one thing and then the other thing is that i didnt think they knew how things would work out. Eventually some people try to leave and that my aunt and uncle with my two cousins, did manage to get past us to leave to the italian zone but i dont want to jump ahead but croatia, what happened when germany invaded the country of yugoslavia fell apart. More or less into the same part it is in now in that croatia became a country afters romania and serbia were taken over by germany but the part of croatia thats along the adriatic, which Everyone Wants to visit, its very beautiful, that is actually occupied by italy. And, italians were i think i was known that italians dealt with jews in a much more humane way than the germans and then it turned out that the local population didnt treat them very well. So, how do croatia become a country all of a sudden by itself . It was certainly not an independent country, though thats exactly what its called itself, its called itself an independent state of croatia. Its a puppet government. How did that become so . There was a political right, very nationalistic right that wanted to have croatia, just croatia by itself without any other members of the former yugoslavia which of course yugoslavia became a country after world war i so they wanted , the jews wanted to be free of jews and croatia wanted to be free of everyone else as well. So, the croatian rightwing did not succeed, they didnt succeed in taking over the country by democratic means. So, they made a pact and said that they wanted to leave on their own and made a fat that pictures can see them shaking hands with hitler. They made a pact. You germans let us run this country and we will do whatever you want us to do. That is how they came into power and then as they said they would run everything exactly the way the jews wanted them and just to finish, my aunt and my uncle and two cousins managed to get passes to go to the italian zone but, unfortunately, they never made it all the way the government said you just return and youll be fine, he made a proclamation in a very short time. Your keys in your uncle ludovic and other family members they learn that your parents had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp but that your brother who was safe from deportation to tell us about what happened to your parents and how you were able to get reunited with your brother. Remember, you told us you were away at that time. Right. Actually my parents the deportation happened fast and they barely had the time to establish campson they were starting to deport people in our first reporting them into four holmer hospice former hospitals or other places where they could find spaces but eventually there were camps. My parents were taken fairly early. They were not yet in camps they were still in zagreb before they were shipped away. So, our housekeeper found out what had happened and she went and asked if she could have my brother and my mother handed the baby over and allowed, she gave the baby to the housekeeper with the hope of course that she would call relatives and he would be safe. Which she did. So, she called my aunt and uncle and they came to get him. I have a fairly clear memory of his arrival, the baby was crying. Thats one of the early memories you have of coming into the house. Right second 1942, your parents have been deported in you and your baby brother now are living with your aunt and your uncle in 1942, your uncle was arrested and sentenced to the jasenovac concentration camp. You and your brother remained with your aunt, tell us about your uncle is imprisonment and what that meant for you and your brother and i think might be worth explaining a little about uncle ludovic. Yes, probably backing off a little bit because in 1942, what happened is all of the jews were deported so, that happened much before my uncle was deported. He was not jewish but he was not jewish. No he was not jewish. So my aunt giza and my uncle were in love for a very long time. He was, as i mentioned, she was 15 years older than my mother and he was 10 years older than she which played a role later on. But he was her boss in a sense and he was working in a local bank and he was one of the directors of the bank and they were in love but they didnt get married for a very long time. He survives so later on i used to ask him, why did you not get married for a long time and they said she stare happy living with her mother with her parents and i was happy living with my mother, so there was no need. But this is of course an excuse. Im sure, he didnt ever want to say, well you know she was jewish and i was not in there were probably the problems were not of the kind that one could imagine. There were no problems within the family there is a picture and people can see of the whole family and everyone is jewish except my uncle whos in the center. Its a picture of my parents wedding. He was always included in everything but, neither was converting to the other religion so, there was no civil ceremony, marriage available in yugoslavia. There were only religious marriages. At one point just before the war started, the war was already raging in the rest of europe and they went hungry to hungary which had a civil ceremony system of marriage. And they got married. So they were married in 1939. They thought, of course that it would save her because they had heard that sometimes in mixed marriages, the one spouse that was not jewish would save the spouse who was jewish. So, they got married. So thats who they were. Everyone was there, 1942 came. You might mention one other thing, your uncle was a fairly prominent man. Yes he was a very prominent man, he was a Bank Director and had been a mayor and he was very well known and he was totally into music and played the violin and played Chamber Music and to play fun things and truly a pillar of the society. And actually, that family was a hypocrisy. But strangely enough, not very healthy, so that his brothers and sisters, very much died young, and none of them married , before dying. They were all young dying of tuberculosis in all kinds of things that people used to die of that now we would cure with penicillin. So by the time i came on the scene, there was only one sister alive of the 12 of them and she had not married and she was older than me, so shes the only person that i actually ever got to know of that family but back to the deportations, the deportations are awful that is one memory that i have this was 1942 so i was four years old and i remember everybody coming to our house everybody coming, caring satchels and pillows and saying goodbye to me and crying and im sure i didnt know what was going on but i know that everyone else was very upset and that was upsetting to me as a child and they were off to what became a horrible camp. We will come back to that. So, here you are with your aunt and uncle and then your uncle who is not jewish, he gets arrested. The reason for that is that even though croatia was so happy to accept german laws, a lot of people did not go along with that of course, croatia would now have its own army and the same laws that germany had. All the restrictions, no jobs, no school, the goods were confiscated and there are papers in the museum that we found that we have to write down one necklace, one winter coat, three dresses, everything. Everything had to be reported and could be taken away. Of course, housing, all of that. So, a lot of people didnt go along with that. Too many in croatia at the time, they actually did not only just go along quietly but they went into the mountains and they became a partisan force and it started slowly and more and more people went and eventually it became quite a force that fought the nazis. And so now you had that was fisher force, i saw very few germans that in the point. So there was constant fighting. Now are going to the part where the partisans would be in the hills nearby and they would be in the town in the partisans would attack and then sometimes and these were horrible fights and sometimes either side would win. Twice they were liberated for a period of time but, since they were very happy with the attacks and successes, they would look for who is responsible one of the things they said that the people in town are probably helping them. So, what they did is they gathered some of the well regarded people in town, including my uncle there were about five of them and they sent them to jasenovac. And that is how they ended up there. The difference to sending jews and someone like my uncle to jasenovac is that the sense that he was a prisoner of war, im sorry, like a political prisoner, thank you. He was a political prisoner so Political Prisoners were treated differently they were given a sentence of sorts. But on the other hand, jews like the first group of my family that went, they were just killed outright order put to work and some survived with meager circumstances and hardly any food or shelter from the cold and miserable weather and people would be thrown in the river, hung and hit and i was told that my grandfather never made it into the camp. He was hit on the head with a shovel on the way in and was killed so, it was extremely brutal. Most of us, im sure of our audience, it was true of me until i met you. Id never heard of jasenovac. It was an especially brutal place. It was an especially brutal place and it was especially brutal it was brutal without being so organized like a switch do we know the the people were counted and it was organized and people were gas but this was much more ad hoc. They were just brutal people and people were killed and every which way. Even buried alive. I dont know so much about buried alive, that would be too much trouble but there were other places where they would have to dig, a large number and then throw them in but one thing i have to say about jasenovac before i forget is that as i said, it held jews of course but also roma of whom there were a fairly large number in croatia. And, most importantly serbians. Why is this important . Because its still something that hangs over but in a sense one of the reciprocating moments but as horrible as it is, so theres never an end, there was never any true reconciliation with true examination or truthfully dealing with numbers . Specs with the uncle now, he had a sentence, what was it like for him . He was in a sense, very lucky because the reason i talked about his age, he was born in 1885 and he was frail and he probably wouldnt have made it through but he did survive. He saw my father there my father was still alive because he was young and strong and they put him to work. He was starving but he was still alive and he told us that when he returned and i know how my father ended up. But my uncle, they knew that he was a banker so, they had him run their accounts is so instead of digging and clearing the problems of the river and building things or running, instead of doing that kind of thing he was put into an office and that saved him and there was a person in the office that was kind to him and gave him some extra food and after the war the reverse happened and that guy ended up ended up being incarcerated by the new government and i remember my uncle sending some packages i wish and who that person was but i dont. So i your uncle is now at jasenovac you and your brother are with aunt giza and then she is denounced and taken. Yes. Yes, she was denounced and my brother and i were there too and no one denounced us, its like almost no one was paying attention to us to how are we there, but she was denounced and they came in picked her up and as she was running off trying to save herself and get into the attic of her house next door, she went to the next door neighbors and said please take the children so this catholic family and this ordinary family of father and mother mother and three children older than we were took us in. And my aunt was caught and deported to auschwitz. You only recently learned what happened to her. I recently, because we have the archives from germany at the museum and i was able to get to the record that she was there and it says she died of intestinal problems and of course if you have intestinal problems and you live in a concentration camp and are exposed to diseases and you could die another way. So aunt giza has been taken and now it wasnt a huge period of time because my uncle just happened to return at that time because he tried to go and follow her and see if he could save her but because she had gone to germany there was no way of saving her. But, i need to say that during the time i was with the family, we actually had armed forces in the backyard and we had these two houses and we were renting an apartment and that is where runjak family lived. My brother and i were told that we needed to call mrs. Runjak , mom and so we did. So my brother always called her mom from then on but i was old enough to know that she was not my mom. So, i was able to switch. If somebody was there that i didnt know i would say mrs. Runjak or i would call her mom if someone was there but if we were by ourselves, she was the mrs. Runjak. I could switch back and forth. Clearly the small town called the local people there knew who you were. Everyone knew who we were. No one denounced you. No one denounced us. Sometimes of someone special would be in town, i remember the head of the something came on a visit and everyone wanted to go see who he was. I wanted to go and of course i wasnt allowed because it was dangerous. Sometimes i would have to wear a hat because i was a flaming redhead in those days, my natural color, and there arent any redheads i was shocked when i came to this country and found out how many redheads there are. So, both my brother and i were in a heads so it was very unusual so i would kind of be sticking out so often when i had to hide id wear a hat or other times when we hid i dont know if we ever got to the point of how we had to hide in the basement. I want us to get there very much so, i do want you to tell us though that you were baptized as catholics i believe during that time. Why did that happen . Well, during the time that i was with the runjak family, mrs. Runjak were very observant catholics, there was a local priest who was not very sympathetic to the jewish cause and he told mrs. Runjak at one point, what about these children, what are we gonna do about them , like it was a threat. So she thought it was time to have us baptized, to save us. At that point my uncle was back and she must have told him and so they decided that the one thing to do would be to baptize us both and so we were baptized. So i believe that this particular priest was tried and convicted after the war. Yes, right. So your uncle is back and he tried to find his wife, aunt giza, but it was too late. And now your living and really a battleground because the war is coming towards the latter stages, tell us about that time for you. Well, as i said, we were sort of in an area where we were able to be fairly close in the mountains and now they are becoming a real force and they would be battled and we would try to hide during the battle because often the bullets would be going through our house. There was a time when we were not able to go and hide in the basement and so i was still in the living room and i remember that very well and sitting in a corner where i could be shielded by the walls because we were living in a house that was built in the 1800s, with huge, fat walls but the dalits would come through the window. So, there was a time that i was in the corner in my uncle was in a room next door and i was crying, so he came and just then a bullet flew through a bedroom window and into the place where he had been sleeping. So in a way i saved his life but, other times and of course, by the time the war ended our house, we had this armoire that was pierced with bullets and the sheets looked like something a child would do with a napkin with little holes but the basement was not an americanstyle basement, it was a seller that you had to get out of the house and down the stairs and there was a dirt floor and that is where we used to have a vineyard and thats where we had barrels with wine and fruits and vegetables put there for the winter, tiny windows, but it was a safe place and there were frogs jumping around and i thought it was perfect the fine but im sure its not an easy place to be and they let me stay there for quite some time and we put cots down and we would because the battles are mostly at night and in the morning you would peer out and see who was in charge. But you just knew that you had to keep out of the way and then you could be free. And then there are times when i have one image in my head of looking to the windows when they didnt want me to and there were carts being pulled and carts that followed bodies. It was a pretty brutal time. They would retaliate and there was one time that i was going , my aunt was already gone and we had somebody helping us in the house and she wanted to go to the movies, so she took me a long, the lady who was taking care but i could see the main square was full of trees and on every tree there was at least one body hanging there because they caught so many partisans and just hang them. And that is an image you remember yes. You shared with me that for you as a child your terror was not about being arrested and being deported, it was really about being killed by gunfire and explosions. That was so immediate. Yes, very immediate because i didnt understand, i think i was too young to understand what it meant to be deported and i knew that my cousins were gone they had disappeared and of course they were killed, i dont know to what extent i understood. You survive through that, the war ends may 1945 and at your brother and you and your uncle, that is three of you. Tell us about the wars and also about what your uncle then did to try to deal with resuming a life with two little children that he is caring for. Right. So, the war came to an end and there was sort of an expectation that maybe someone would return. For a long time people used to ask me, like strange people on the street would ask me are you still hoping that your parents would return . The reason for that was there were rumors that some people were taken to russia, sent to siberia or whatever, but of course that was not so. There were people who survived in the family, very few. One of my uncles on my mother side and one uncle on my fathers side survived as prisoners of war in germany so they were in the Yugoslavian Army when the war started. And another uncle on my fathers side survived because he was that he and his fiancie a scant escape to hungary and they were on a train that ended up in belgium and from there they were rescued and so, eventually, anyway the two uncles, he did not come back he remained in switzerland and i connected with him later but the two uncles that returned, they came to see if anyone there was alive they wanted to take my brother and me but of course, we didnt know him and we didnt really want to go and my uncle certainly wasnt wanting to give us up because now thats all he had left. So, he immediately, in 1946, he adopted us legally and now the two uncles that wanted us to go with them, they werent successful because one of the things that happened was they asked me if i wanted to stay or go with them. I said, im staying and i had to make that decision. They both ended up in what is now israel and they both remarried other spouses were killed and actually one of them was not killed but he got married to a survivor in the ended up in israel. I never got to see my mothers brother again. Com my fathers brother i did see, he actually came to switzerland to my wedding. That was the first time . Yes. Of course not long after you were adopted by uncle ljudevit cut your brother died. Yes, unfortunately, having survived the war he contracted scarlet fever and died. There were three children, three boys in town that contracted scarlet fever. He must have had a weak heart thats what they said and there were no antibiotics then he died very fast. So, from then on it was just my uncle and i. What you know or can recall about when your brother died, the impact on your uncle that he has lost his wife, your aunt, he has adopted you and now he loses his now adopted son . It was devastating and it took him forever i dont think he ever got over it. But, he concentrated on taking care of me and i was very lucky because he was a very loving person and i had a very good home. We had housekeepers and so on who tried to do their best. I ended up then going away i went to high school, i had to go away because there was no Academic High School in that town, it was like 25 km away which is like 12 miles, so its no distance however , that was before cars, planes took an hour and so i had to my uncle was insisting that i had to go to school, i never mentioned that theres so much to talk about budding camp, when he was in the concentration camp, when he was in jasenovac , they knew he could lay the violin and they had had groups before the so they wanted to be entertained and so they had him put together a choir. They were putting performances on so to my uncle that was always music, its so important, so i had to go to music school in the afternoon and regular school in the morning so i was staying in the southern town. By that point i had connected to my uncle in switzerland. Yes, i want you to tell us about that in the time we have left, the context for the audience, you are living now under a communist government. Oh, yes. So life is . We went from fascism to communism just like that. So, it wasnt possible actually to leave yugoslavia but my uncle from switzerland wrote to me and said, could i come to visit . And because the communist government considered me, what they called a victim of fascism i was given a passport. Because you had a designation you were a victim of fascism. Yes and the swiss eventually gave me a visa so when i was in the 10th grade i went to switzerland and that is the first time i saw any of my family since i was very young, since i was a very young child. So, i ended up finding myself in a Orthodox Jewish family. My uncle had two children and one of them was already seven and the other was oneyearold i think and it was quite a shock, as i, at that point i had no knowledge of anything jewish or not only was i living in a catholic country but no one was observing any religion during the communist regime. So, i went from that to the orthodox family but they were a lovely family. I enjoyed being with them and i was there for a month and then they said, when you go back to why dont you try to come here when you are at university and that is what happened. And you got permission again . I got permission again yeah it was for the unusual, to get permission to leave in a communist world. To go to a western country. So you go to switzerland and live with them, how is that for uncle ljudevit . Obviously hard, and i felt very bad very bad leaving him behind, but i thought it was going to be for a year. You know, im going to go back in a year and im just going to study french and i will be fine. But that not what happened. I just want you to hear about how she met her husband, because i like this. I got on the train to go to switzerland to study for a year. And on the train there were, there were three young men having a lovely discussion outside of the hallway. The train was very full, so they were standing in the hallway arguing. And english, right . And english. And i had studied english from fifth way, no, seventh, eighth grade on. From eighth grade on i studied english and i loved the language. When i went to the university i was an english major. So i had no opportunity to actually hear a native speak, native speakers of english, or be able to speak english to a natives weaker. So i was like all years trying to hear what they are talking about, what are they talking about . It is 1957 in the fall, time of the horrible things that happened in little rock, arkansas with the children being not allowed to get into high school the governor not allowing us to enter high school. And eventually, the president having to send the troops to prevent these children from being maligned. So thats what they were talking about. And one of the guys was accusing , one of the guys was a yugoslav , obviously, and obviously a communist, otherwise he wouldnt be going out of the country. On the other one was, the one that was being accused was un american who was being told like , what kind of a country is this . What kind of behavior is that . How can you be like that . And the young man is trying to say, its not me and its not most of us. Most of us believe in, and freedom and equality for all. And im sure this is going to end. So when the discussion ended, i went back to the hallway and this young man who was being accused of this bad activity by our American Government said to me, pretty red hair. As mild and said, all used english . We started speaking and talked for quite a while until he got off in venice and i continued. Then we exchanged addresses and he wrote to me and i wrote back and he wrote again and i wrote back and a year later he returned and we were married. Of course then you moved here in 1958, but you are able to see your uncle ludovic again. Of course i cannot go back. We had to get married in switzerland and come here. I cannot go to yugoslavia at that time because i would be afraid that i cannot get a visa to come out again. Mike its one thing to send you off for your university. And now i am living forever and this was not going to work. So i did not go back. But i went back as soon as i could, which means when i got an american citizenship, which i got as fast as i could. At that time i had two children already people think you can get a citizenship like that when you get married, it doesnt work that way. You have to wait several years and apply and have to test and so on. And then i went back and i was able to go twice on these trips. It wasnt easy, just like take off for europe, especially when you are young bringing a few children. I managed to go twice before he passed away. I think we will have to close our program. So much so that dora had to skip over, as you can probably guess. So much that we wouldve liked to have heard about. I will turn back to dora in just a moment to close our program. We didnt get a chance for her to answer a question, but when she is done she will remain on the data we invite anybody in the audience, all of you if you want, she can take it. Come up on the stage and meet her and get your picture taken with her. You are willing to do that, right . Of course. Durable stay on stage. We have programs, and most weeks wednesdays and thursdays. This week is a little different because its july 4. But wednesdays and thursdays until august eighth. You can see all of our programs on our youtube channel. We hope you will come back either see one of our programs. Dont go yet, its our tradition at first person that our first person get the last word. With that, i will turn back to dora to close todays graham and again we will invite you to come up if you want, once she is finished. I wrote something down because i wanted to make sure that i dont fumble as we go along and i wanted to be sure that you get my message straightaway. So when i visited jaco what last year at that concentration camp, there were fifty children that were murdered there. It was just a most awful way. And to just see those graves were unbelievable. Why were there graves to begin with . Because somebody took it upon themselves to actually put down the names when they were burying them, surreptitiously. So thinking of that, thinking also of a friend of mine who actually, we were at the funeral yesterday, she was separated from her parents when she was a baby she was born in a concentration camp. Im sorry, and i got up. She was born in a warsaw ghetto and the parent smuggled her out to a catholic family who then sheltered her until the end of the war. When the mother returned, she didnt want to go to the parents because she didnt know who she was. Its very hard, it mustve been awful to be separated from her parents and to have to go back to her parents, not knowing who they were. But im thinking of that and i also think about my baby brother who was separated from our mother so that he would survive. The agony felt by my mother is in my mind. As i watch the shocking news and hear about the events on our southern border. Young children, even babies, being separated from their parents. All i can think of and say is not now, not here, not in this country. No this is not the holocaust, whats going on now, no. But its not the best we can do either. So i want to join those on both sides of the political spectrum who ask for an end of the practice of separating families. And for the best possible care for the children. Having lived through the holocaust, i find it imperative to plead for the humane treatment for those who seek our help. I will continue to peek about my past and the hopes that a reminder of that past may inspire us all to see the tolerance, compassion , empathy and respect for others makes for a better world for all. Thank you very much for being here. [ applause ] this is a special edition of American History tv, a sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on American History tv. Like lectures and history, american artifacts come real america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency, and special event coverage about our nations history enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. Weeknights of this month we are featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, a look at the presidency of james pulled. The university of tennessee recently completed a project to assemble and edit the papers of americas eleventh president and hosted a conference on president polk with historians discussing his views on federal land mining and policies, the environment and religion. Watch American History tv tonight beginning on 80s during on cspan3. The house will be in order. For forty years cspan has been providing america with unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington dc and around the country. So you can make your own mind. Created by cabell in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. The u. S. Commission on civil rights recently hosted an event on early Twentieth Century immigration policy in the not era refugee crisis of the 30s and 40s. We havent had the immigration act of 1924 impacted the crisis and how racism, antisemitism and xenophobia played a role in limiting the