John Peiser
John Peiser's family story spans three continents. His father, born in Germany in 1900 near Frankfurt, came to the United States in the early 1930s and worked as a sales manager for Marshall Field before dying of a heart attack when John was young. His mother grew up in Frankfurt during the rise of the Nazis, enduring antisemitism and hiding from Hitler's marches, before emigrating to Chicago to live with relatives. After John's father died, and with his mother struggling to support two young sons, her family in South Africa offered to take them in. In 1952 John, his brother, and their mother flew from Lisbon to Johannesburg to begin a new life.
In South Africa, John adapted to a new country as an American outsider, attending Galbraith and then Hans North schools before studying at Wits University, where he took physics and mathematics before finding his passion in psychology. He worked at the National Institute for Personal Research, took part in expeditions to study the Bushmen in the Kalahari, and married Leora in 1969. Deeply opposed to apartheid, he marched against the government and, as a young executive, appointed one of the first black personnel managers at his company. After a colleague took credit for his dissertation, he moved into industry and built a long and successful career, eventually serving as a board director of a public company.
Traveling to the United States in 1976 to present a paper, John visited Dallas and fell in love with the city. Amid the unrest following the Soweto uprising, he and his family immigrated in 1978. He worked for Fox and Jacobs, ran a Western-wear manufacturing company, and later joined his brother Alan's accounting firm, earning his CPA and helping grow it to about sixty people. In Dallas he became a tireless community builder, helping start and lead Solomon Schechter and later an Orthodox high school, serving as president of a synagogue and of the local ZOA chapter, and supporting Israel-focused causes. He and Leora raised their children Gary and Daniela in a rich Jewish life, treasuring reminders of his artistic father and quietly generous stepfather.
themes
apartheid and opposition to it
immigration and displacement
Jewish education and day schools
community building
family memory and loss
German-Jewish heritage and the shadow of the Holocaust
adaptation to new countries
Full Transcript
Today is Saturday, April the 16th, 2016, and we are interviewing Johnny Pizer. I'm Joan Grimmont, and Lynette Rekusen is working the cameras. Thank you. Hi, Johnny. Thank you. Johnny, tell us about your family where they came from prior to your being born in South Africa going back as many generations as you know well let me start off by saying my father he was born in Germany in a town Germany not far from Frankfurt and he came to the States somewhere I guess in the early 30s his background is unknown to me really because he died when I was 8 years old. So I don't have much of his background.
But there's some things I do have. And this is really strange because when we were married the name I took was Yonatan Ben-Manashe. And then many years later I came across this cloth. This is my father's cloth. This is the Germans used when the kids were born. It's over 100 years old. It gets long. You can't get the whole thing. You can hold up. Okay. And on here. So this was for his dress. In 1900. He was born in 1900. So what does it say? Moshe. So that's his name. That was his name, Moshe. He always thought it was Menashe. Oh. So I guess right for the national without the name.
Isn't that interesting? And we named Gary later on. Moshe without recognizing it. That's a coincidence. Yeah. Wow. So. Look, 1900. That 28th of September, 1900. That is amazing. So that's when he was born. I don know much about his family His father had a shop in I have only a picture of his shop in Germany Okay. So he must have been some shopkeeper. But I never knew his father. So he came to the States. And my mother... My mother's family lives in Frankfurt. Okay. And when all the trouble came in Germany, the family decided they needed to move, and they chose South Africa. Because Germany and South Africa had pretty close relationships at the time.
South West Africa at the time was a German colony, and when gold and diamonds were discovered in South Africa, people went there for the last. So her family decided to go And she had a brother and a sister So her brother went first Then her sister went And then she was She was the youngest, she was supposed to go with her parents To South Africa The laws changed in South Africa She was not allowed yet I don't know what the reason was I don't think she really grasped it How old was she at the time? She must have been 17 17 But she, when she grew up in Frankfurt, she couldn't, she was at school, but she was tormentor at school.
She was poor names, and she was Jewish, and she was around. So she, she had actually, last year at school really was nothing. I think she stayed at home most of the time. And then Hitler used to, it was not far from the university where Hitler had these big marches. And they used to march up and down the road, and she used to go and hide. She used to go up to the attic and just hide. so she didn't have a wonderful upbringing in South Africa I know really little about her parents because they went to South Africa, I didn't even know them really well I should say that I'll qualify that in a second so anyway, she came to the States she knew nothing did she know anybody in the States?
well she had, it was quite strange because she had her I think her grandfather and grandmother had relatives actually came to Chicago. So she ended up living with an unborn aunt that she did not get on with. And then she had nothing she had to do something So there was a woman that helped her learn dressmaking so she got a bit of money And that woman brother took a liking to her He got divorced and then married her. And I was born a year later. So he worked for Marshall Field. He was a sales manager, but he travels a lot. And he got a heart attack on the road when I was six.
And then I took him to the hospital, I think in Philadelphia. And he used to send me home. He was in the hospital. I could never listen to him. He used to get his medicine, little white containers, which he put soil in an American flag and sent it home to me. And then he got on the heart attack and died. He never saw him again. Okay. And so do you have memories of him? So I've read a little memory of him. I know he drove a blue car because he used to sit by the window. He used to travel and come back. He used to count the blue cars that came by until he would come.
My mother and I used to have some competition as to who would guess how many cars that would be. And one day she said to me, we're sitting by the window, he's not coming back. That's how I learned that he passed. And then when he passed, I had to take care of my younger brother. I had to take him to school. It wasn't easy. It would be an easy job. So, my mother worked at a candy store where she really couldn't make it. She had no skills or nothing. what happened was that her her brother was still in the war parents along the ride my father's parents had died and her family in South Africa offered to bring up South Africa so we flew actually to Lisbon to Johannesburg and what year was this?
what year was this? it was 1952 so it was you and your brother and your mother yeah and I remember We lived first with my sister's family and I never could get on with them. So that lasted two weeks. Eventually we took an apartment in Hillbrough, a career that it was. And I went to school at Gale Boyce. And I remember the first day I was at school I came with my American uniform which was jeans a colored shirt and a colored jacket and my Chicago accent And my first teacher was a Christian Afrikaans teacher Right. We taught Bible studies. So she and I did not get on.
We played one, and I didn't fit any of the kids because I was dressed. I was a brilliant outcast. So I had to adapt would get killed. I adapted. Okay, smart. So, yeah, so I grew up basically with the other boys. During the latter years, I really enjoyed the school. I played with a teacher. A lot of teachers took a fancy to me playing tennis. My father learned to play tennis. So he used to play with me until he lost his one eye. So that's where I grew up. So your mother remarried? a mother remarried. Somebody in South Africa? Yes. Now my father came also originally from Germany and then he came to South Africa.
His family came from Germany, had been to South Africa, had gone back to Germany, war broke out, his parents actually went to Israel and then came back to South Africa. He came to South Africa and then I visited in the army and was a sergeant in the army in North Africa, he did training and he just loved to be his horse boy. I can't remember them exactly. Alright, and how many siblings do you have? I have two brothers. I've got one brother from my first father and another brother from my sister father. So you have extended family in South Africa? You said your mother's sister.
I had extended family from mother's sister. Right. And so they had two daughters when they got married. And my stepfather had family there too. So I inherited an Omi. Omi and Omi. Okay. So yoga boys was elementary school. And then high school was? High school was Hans North. Okay. And I remember going to Hans North because I came. The oil used to feed into Atswamboise, and for some reason I had in my head that Atswamboise was poison. I wasn't going to go there. So I tried to get them to Kess and I was like second in my class but only to one boy from our school to go to Kess.
So I went to Holland's. Was Holland's a co-ed school? No. Boys only. Boys only. Galbraith was also boys only. Right. And so was Kess, right? And so was Kess. Most of the schools were either girl or whatever, in that time. They started going up later on, I think, in the Northview. It was mixed. But I was still just men, boys. So after high school, tell us what you did. Did you go to Wits University? I went to Wits. I didn't know what I was going to do, but a psychologist told me I should do physics and mathematics. So I listened to him. And it was fine until my third year, and a friend of mine gave me a book on psychology.
I don't know why he gave it to me. He gave me two books on psychology, and that just about failed me in that year. Because I started doing arts lectures, and psychology lectures, and sociology lectures, and statistics, and history, whatever. Anything but physics and mathematics. And then a good friend of mine said to me, you're going to come to me and you're going to study or you're going to fail. He forced me to study with him. So fortunately he did that because I would have failed. I think I passed by the skin of my teeth. So then that was my BS degree and we went to Europe for three months.
At the end of which I landed in Israel. Were you still single at the time? Still single. There was a girl, my friend had a cousin who immigrated to Israel, who's prepared for lawyers and over there. It was a touch and go. I really liked her. I wanted to stay in Israel and go back to South Africa and go and study. I couldn't afford to stay there. Went back to South Africa, determined I was going to study psychology. Fought with my parents. I had to find my way through that. worked at the National Institute for Personal Research for four years doing psychological research And then actually at that time I also studied the Bushman we had some expeditions to study the Bushman for seven weeks Oh, yeah.
In Kalahori. Uh-huh. Which I brought some of the stuff I brought back. It was a very fascinating study. But the most interesting thing about that was that we had about 40, We had developed like 40 psychological tests to test in the Bushmen. We don't speak any language, they speak their own language. They had no dictionary in our way of communicating other than sign language. But after two days there, I realized it was chaos. There were nine people, and you had to get through these tests, and it was totally disorganized. And there was a German girl that worked for the same group. We got together and we organized our work.
and otherwise it would have been a total disaster so I learned something about myself I learned about the Bushmen as well but I learned a little bit about myself and it was kind of a turning point in that it was several years later when I was about to finish my honours degree in psychology I was going to do a PhD either at WITS or at University of British Columbia Vancouver but this lady came along and and this lady is your wife I can move to British Columbia and support her and me because she's the one who studied she was at a mature study so when did you get married so we got married in June 1969 at about that point in time all this was happening and I was I was working on submitting my dissertation to this.
And the guy I worked for, or worked in work for, kind of with him as a mentor at the NIPR, he stole the dissertation from my thesis. He stole your dissertation? He took everything. He knew everything I was doing. And he took basically the same thing I was doing and took it for his PhD application. So once he did that, I couldn't use what I had done. So he got a PhD? So he eventually got a PhD. But I said to myself, this is the way these organizations work. No way. And for six months remember for six months I tried to get into the industry It was because I had only a thing about physical mathematics a degree in psychology working for a research institute and he had tried to get into a business organization.
But I was very fortunate. I got into a very good company. And I made a good offer and I accepted my personal manager to start. and I had a really wonderful career. I was there for eight to eight, 39 years. And the last several years I was appointed the board director of the company, public company. And I had a lot of recognition there, a lot of achievements. Okay, good. And had kind of fun. But in the midst of that, because the work that I was doing, I appointed a black personnel manager one of the first companies to do so and so I gave him a car gave him a room at the executive level of our company and told him to use the restroom as he could and he could do whatever he wanted to so this is late 60s, early 70s this is probably 74 and what was amazing about that was the development increasing unrest amongst the blacks in South Africa culminating in some riots in 1976 but our company didn't suffer because of him but he'd taken us on tours to Soweto and show us how people lived and show the conditions in which they lived and really we knew what was going on and there was kind of a a sad education, I would say, because not that I was unfamiliar with it, because when I was at births I had already got on the marches against the government, like all blacks to come into university, you know, I never could accept the way the government worked.
I don't know where they came from. I couldn't, from the day I walked into South Africa for some reason, I could not tolerate the government. When I was only eight years old, where they I had no idea. But long and short of it, in 1976, that same year I was invited. I had worked with an international company in England two of them actually in one of the states And the one of the states recognized the work that I was doing and they had their first international conference in Atlanta and they advised me to come and present the paper there. So that's when I came to Atlanta.
I gave the paper, I had to give it twice because I liked it. So I took the opportunity of traveling for seven weeks throughout the state. So in Atlanta, I was in New York, I was in Houston, LA, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, the headquarters. And whilst I was there, I was in Houston on a Wednesday, Thursday. And on Thursday, I interviewed with Exxon. And I had an uneasy feeling that being juried was not the right thing to have ever been. So I left with an uneasy feeling after an interview, and I was walking, and I j-walked in Houston across one of those feats. I get to the other side, and this huge policeman accosted me, and he said, I'm going to give you a ticket, you can't do this.
I said, do what? You can't j-walk, it's against the law of Houston to j-walk. So that's the first thing, I didn't get rid of that. But he didn't give me a ticket, but I was trevident. Yeah. So when I went back to the hotel, I called this friend of my mother's up in Dallas, and I said, I know I'm not supposed to come to Dallas, but I can stay here. Do you mind if you take me over Shabbos? I'll pass by until the morning. They took me, and I came to Dallas. I love Dallas. Clean airport was fantastic. The roads were unencumbered. We went to Sherith.
It was warm and inviting. people would just spend, we could go into just a lovely, lovely place. The economy was thriving. The weather was fantastic. Of course it was winter and it was not raining, so it was a nice weather. But I liked it. And so when I went back to South Africa, that's when I started asking people and several people knew about South Africa, Josh's in particular. and there were some other people in it. We knew that we found out that Pete and Brady and Marcus lived here, and there were some other selectors, but the system. ...and...Mentor. He was here. Edmund Penn. Yeah. We heard that you were coming.
Right. And... The Hackermans. The Hackermans. So we've got this kind of strange, like, you know, and everyone was saying how the economic growth here was fantastic. So that's the opportunity I was looking for. So I wasn't going to stay in New York. It was a crazy place. LA was a crazy place. So I don't know what to do. So at this stage you had children? Yeah, well, yeah, that's just that Gary was just born. Okay, and Gary's your youngest? And he's the youngest, and Daniela was Daniela. Okay. So what was your family's reaction to your leaving South Africa, even though, you know, obviously I'm happy there, they might have said that.
Let me put it a little bit differently. I told my brother to leave here before. So he went to, Alan went to New York University to his MBA. So if you come into the States, go there, you'll make your connection, you'll be connected, you'll have a much easier time. And I said, we're coming. And my father didn't object. My mother didn't, she was worried. She didn't object as much as she was worried because South Africa was not what it used to be. And her mother goes to her, she didn't look the way, she only remembered the way it was. She'd been here a couple of times, so she had changed, but the circumstance in which she lived here was not particularly pleasant.
But they were basically supportive. At that time, South Africa was going through this period. Everyone was talking, shall we stay, shall we go, what shall we do? And we said, there's no way we're going to live in that type of environment. It was just after the 1976 Soweto rise. Approximately, we left in 1978. The biggest reaction I got was from my company. They said, no way to leave. I'll give you any job you want, anything you want. I said, I'm in a minute. So I said, OK, then four months, I just went to work. And Dallas was the destination Dallas was the destination Right You had people you knew the people you had contacts Yeah All right So there there were two decisions One decision was to leave South Africa But we had two other possibilities One was Israel So we actually went from Dallas to Israel.
And I didn't feel comfortable. I'll take the better living. And then from Israel, I took a look at Toronto. Okay. And it would have been a second choice. So we basically came here. And I stayed with my mother's friend, looking around for a job. They ought to stay in Israel, so it wouldn't have, wouldn't encumber her, it wouldn't have a current expense involved looking around. It was very lonely, I would tell you. Yeah, for sure. So what kind of work have you done since you've been in Dallas? I worked for a job with Fox and Jacobs I started off in their HR department and then I became the regional sales director but that industry peaked in like 1981 it was the largest home building in the States and then home building tank, we had like 20 layoffs and eventually in 85 Centex which had some holding in the company to go So I didn't have a job in Fox & Jacobs.
So I started up a consulting business, but my second client was a manufacturing company. I started doing work for them. They said they wanted me to be their president. So they made me a offer of the good news. I ran a manufacturing company. We had two plans, one in Brownwood and one in Bonham. It was in the schmutter business. Making kind of awesome guys. South African boy. Making Western clothing, men's clothing. With the yolks and the belts. My wife had a fit every time. And the boots. And the hat. Well, not the hat. I never bought a hat. Because I bought. And her family used to come and steal all the clothes.
Her father absolutely He loved the clothes. He wouldn't take them off. He bought the pants and the jacket. I was there for five years, and the clothing business in the States died because it was just too expensive. You couldn afford these people We had wages that were equal to or close to people in China Poland Mexico wherever Right. So, I left there, and at the same time, my brother Alan, he worked for Cougars, and then he worked for, he and Marcus, he worked for Boris at Neiman's. and then he started up his own accounting firm and one day, close to this time he complained to me, I can't find anyone to trust, I want to grow my firm but another girl can trust, I don't have anyone on board what do I do so when I had this thing happen to me I said, you know what, Alan, I'll join you so I joined them in 1990 I didn't have a CPA I had my MBA, I had a CPA And so that first year, I joined in the beginning of tax season.
My brother's a worst trader. He can't teach anybody anything. So I hadn't done accounting. I hadn't done tax. So I had to do it. I did it. And then I went to UNT to catch up accounting, accounting, audit, tax, that year. We took over another firm at the end of that year, Alchix, and write my CPA a year later. And we grew the firm. We merged about three years later with Sydney Golden, and then we took over multiple firms over the pier. We had a firm that was rather unique, we didn't have it. We did it in such a way that we had to put the firm first, not yourself first.
So many firms, accounting firms and medical practitioners and lawyers have a philosophy of what you kill. Whatever you produce, that's what you earn and you make the money that way. We had a philosophy that the firm owns the clients, and that's where we've got a company. The clients will be served by whoever's best to serve the client. So now we're currently with about 60 people. All right. Interesting. And we've got a few acquisitions. We had some nice growth We had some wonderful people It a very nice atmosphere that we developed Good Let talk about your involvement in the Dallas Jewish community How involved were you when you came to Dallas?
How did you get involved? That's also a strange story. I wasn't involved. Leora wanted our kids to go to a Jewish school, and I said, I didn't go to a Jewish school. I just go to a Jewish school. It's ridiculous. So she won that argument. But, so the kids originally went to Sherriff. But that year, the next year they never was going to go to first grade. And the only elementary school that existed was a keeper. And there was a movement of some people to establish a conservative day school. It started initially And then a group of people, not me, a group of people got together and more forcedly wanted to start it.
And they had some backing for some people than sheriffs. And the officer was supportive of it. And so they started getting it going. And then I was called to a meeting not far from this house. And I'm not talking about names. We're talking about a meeting. and the people who were invited were South Africans and Mexicans and there were one or two Americans. People who were interested in starting the school. I went to this pretty much on protest, but the gentleman in the house was stood up and said, you will not start another day school here, you will join a key book, the Jewish community cannot sit forward to Jewish day schools, and we're not up there.
So of course he tells the African-American someone up there, and Daphka, and he's part of the school. So that's my recognition of how the school got some momentum. So the school gets started, and shortly afterwards I get a call from Peter Lewin. Peter says to me, I want you on the board of the school. I said, no, Peter, my kids are going to school, it's enough. But Peter was relentless. He called me I don't know what time I mentioned I gave it, and I came to the school, and actually, it was a good thing for the school. Harvey Lurin and several other people eventually joined that group and became actually very...
It actually became a home away from home. Because what we found... It actually came... It actually came to us looking backwards rather than realizing it at the time. Coming from South Africa... In South Africa, it's like a fish in the water. You don't realize the water is there until you're out of it. out of it. And that's what happened. Because in South Africa we were not, you know, we had our Friday nights, but we weren't religious in any shape. I mean, we were a lot of friends who were Jewish, and you kind of, the Jewish community was strong, it was cohesive, we protected one another, we did things together, and all the rest of it.
It was a very close, warm community. And you came here, and the community here was nice, but it was not, it was different. and we were different so we didn't connect so for example I went to a form we were part to Abominus at Temple Emanuel in December and I walked in and I said sorry you can't come in I was invited to Abominus I was coming in no you can't come in and short of it he didn't want me to wear a talus or a kippah. I said to him, I'm going in, throw me out if you'd like to. But I was the only one on the shore, until the rabbi wore a young kippah.
That's what you're used to, yeah. And it was very strange, very, very strange. And so that was the type of environment we came from, which was unusual. It was really strange. But even Reformers in Africa were not like that. So, I was heavily involved with Sodom and Chak at the time, to help bring out Ed Feinstein, who was fantastic. I think I was president of the Stolz. He built a building. A new building. A new building. Okay. And that was a major impetus. I would tell me that they didn't. I mean, it's really Ed Feinstein. It was my part of it that led that. And so we had to build a school from scratch.
We had to find teachers and run the school and fire administrators deal with it fine she was a part of a terrible administrator and all of the stories that go on with that history So I mean when I finish being president I typically when I done with something I like being done I don't have my ghost hat in here with anything, I need to go and get on with them and go do the things. My involvement subsequent to that was more on the sidelines than ever involved in the board. A few years later I was approached and wanted me to help start a high school, a multi-disciplinary high school, conservative form.
Community high school. They had the ground not far from Solomon's chapter and it was a disaster. Well, we worked with fights and couldn't agree on anything, that fell through. And then, um, seven years later I was called to Yadon, that worked with Yadon, I was called to another group that wanted to start an Orthodox high school. And I found, when I walked into that meeting, I read nothing about Orthodoxy, it was really weird. I read nothing about the fightings going on in Orthodoxy, modern Orthodoxy, So, father gosh, can I go? Nothing. But the board was in board. The people who got him started were floundering.
And so, I basically got him started. I kept him on focus. We got an outside person and we got him. And then in three months, we started school. So I said to them, we've got 14 parents wanting to give the kids to the school. For God's sake, father. It's the best family you ever got to get. And that's how it started at the bottom of the JCC in a shack. There were no classrooms, all of them were separated by curtains. And it was quite strange because none of my kids were there because they were beyond the time at school. But you got the school started and that also has prospered to be a successful school today.
And it formulated basically along similar values, not quite the same as the Orthodox, but along similar values to Solomon's chapter. Because you wanted to have you had to have a high quality of education start with the world of political So that was that part of the world in Jewish community Other part I was president of the chapter of the ZOA in Dallas And then I fought against, I forget the guy's name who ran it, who was a more political figure than I could tolerate. So we broke away from ZOA and eventually formed for the Camp Adelaine's Island. and we've linked up with our organization. They all have helped that organization grow.
And so I've had to do that. And many of them have worked with data. That's the local development here and helped them form their strategies and growth. And they've also been successful. So I've been very involved. Involved. Let's go back to your family. Once you were here, you said your brother, Albert, came to join you. Any other family members? No. And do you still have family in South Africa? Do you go back there? I did have family back there. I still live there. So my father passed away in 2006. My mother passed away a year and a half ago. So we used to go back.
We used to come here. They used to sit in this pool. They used to sit outside here, baking in the sun. 105 degrees outside. and went inside. Went to Jacinda. Left in the morning and I was still there. They came here. They didn't come here, we went there. And when Yorah's father was alive, he also came here and we went to Israel. We were going one or the other, backwards and forwards all the time. Yorah's brother lives in Toronto and he came down, but we went up there. And my brother lives in South Africa, so obviously we went there. to see him, his family and kids.
Okay, so anything you miss about life in South Africa? I know it was a long time ago, but anything? You know, it's kind of strange looking back because I only realized what South Africa was by being here. Like I say to Americans, you don't know what America's got until you leave this country and go outside and see what's outside of it. So what was What was amazing about South Africa is that the warmth of the community you could pop into someone else place was unusual pop in and say hello to her here America would say to you I love to see you I say okay So why don't you pop in sometime?
And it took me some time to go, that's not what that meant. You get to make an appointment, give me a time and a date. And then it usually was not in the house, it was going to go out for dinner. Whereas instead of looking, you popped in and it was just fine. And that's still pretty sad. They're still pretty much the same here. At least at our level, I think the next generation has lost some of that. But it's very different. I must say the Jewish community is getting a lot better. The federation was very weak when I first came here. It was just an association of Jewish bodies.
but in recent years they've become much more than what they did originally in support of Jewish education and more community effort to represent the Jewish community more forcefully in public affairs and have their voice and have connection to Israel and foster leadership and all the rest of it which had been a do originally So you were actually you were born in the USA you were a citizen I would like it. It would make it very easy to come. Very easy. You know when I said to a fighter, all I had to do was, it took a few months to have a green card. Wow, that's true.
And we just came. Tony, very interesting, all of it. Anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to talk about? Anything you'd like to show us that you have? Cool, you know, I've got, I can show you lots of stuff, I just want to prepare to show you. This is interesting. This is, again, my father that I really knew we were involved. He was a, like a heap of these pencil drawings. Wow. I'm sure these are just remnants of what was left over. But he has a whole book of these. But it's very interesting. The landscape is devoid of people, for the most part. It's all buildings and quite depressing, where I see it.
It may not have been depressing to him. Right. He also had been co-editor of this German paper, it must have been at college or something, because his sketches are in here too, and he's just someone who's writing in here as well. So it's quite... I don't know if he played the guitar, I feel the musical as well. enough. I wasn't having that much because I was too young to appreciate it. But on my stepfather's side of it, he was also, he's extraordinary, he was an amazing person too because he was involved with the Jewish Ex-Service League in South Africa and their good deeds were under the radar.
They never publicized anything, anyone in trouble, financially, food, He was always there helping him, but you would never know about it. My mother, her whole history is a mystery. She never spoke about it. I never spoke much about Germany. That's interesting. I think it's generations that are so horrifying, just difficult. We had all that good lives in Germany before we started. Okay. Thank you, Johnny. It was very interesting. Thanks very much.