Nicole Roy
Nicole Roy's parents both came from prominent Jewish families in Europe. Her father was born in Krakow, one of a large family, most of whom perished in the Holocaust, with only one relative surviving. As a boy he was sent by train to Belgium to attend a French school and lived most of his life there, eventually working in the diamond industry under an uncle who helped found it. Her mother was born near Berlin into a family she described as more German than Jewish, and she lost her parents at a young age. Her parents met and married in Belgium, and when danger grew, they escaped by crossing the Pyrenees on foot into Spain, having baptized Nicole's young sister to protect her.
The family eventually secured passage on a ship to Rio de Janeiro, where Nicole's father arrived with only ten dollars but was helped by a friend from Belgium to start again. Nicole was born in Brazil in 1944 and spoke only Portuguese until the family moved to Cape Town when she was about four. She recalls the difficult transition of starting school unable to communicate. She grew up in what she remembers as a wonderful time in Cape Town, drawn strongly to Judaism even though her parents were not observant, traveling by two buses and a train to Hebrew school and belonging to a temple youth group. As a young woman she became politically active against apartheid and was blacklisted for years, with her mail opened and her phone tapped.
Nicole married Michael, whom she met when he came to book a trip at the travel agency she ran. Influenced by her family's history and unwilling to have her sons drafted, the couple applied to emigrate and after five years received visas, arriving in Dallas in February 1980 with three children. They were welcomed by a small community of South African families and by Ron and Phyllis, who helped them settle. Nicole worked in travel for several years, later took up painting, and was active in her synagogue as sisterhood president and in resettlement work with Russian Jews. A treasured legacy is a Torah her father donated in memory of his family, which traveled from Israel through London and South Africa to Dallas, from which her sons and grandsons have read.
Her daughter Monique is an author whose books include a fictionalized account of her grandparents' escape across the Pyrenees.
Full Transcript
today is September the 17 2013 and we're interviewing Nicole Roy for the roots of boots project thank you for being with us cause inflation patient council I'd love to know first of all about first of all about your family history can you tell me a little bit about your what you know about your grandparents and where they may have come from in Europe yes sure my father was born in cracker his mother was one of 18 children and they were very prominent in the shtetl of cracker we I was very fortunate enough to go and visit with my husband number of years ago and unfortunately
all of them well 97 on his family was taken to outwards and they all perished except one one of the family so there were 97 that perished of his family my mother was born in a little place called Cottbus which was an hour outside Berlin and she was from a prominent Jewish family but I think they were more German the Jews you know how that families grew up in in Germany and she lost her parents at a very young age and her twin sister and her brother who emigrated as Hitler came to power and they saw things were really deteriorating for them very blond and
blue-eyed and very Aryan looking just what Hitler wanted went to Belgium and my father had been at school his mother was a very for that time and add she would she sent her son and her sisters child that was all brought up by her because he she died at childbirth so the two boys were brought up like twins they were put on it on a train and cracker and they went for two days on a trend to Belgium and they went to a fringe school which was very unusual for the shit'll laughs in cracker in those days and so he actually most of his life
lived in Belgium went home holidays to to crack up and remained in Belgium and tried to get his parents out of cracker but unfortunately they thought nothing would ever happen to them in in the tongue so my dad was able to survive with my mother in Belgium my they couldn't actually communicate in the beginning but somehow got married he looked here he actually spoke seven languages and my mother spoke German and then of course affects both French and she opened a beauty salon with her sister her twin sister and my father was in the diamond industry under his uncle who was the founder of the
diamond industry actually which became one of the biggest in the world today it's India but he was one of the founders of the damned industry Belgium and his last name was swag zwe IG and his uncle was himmelblau but he changed changed it to him and if he was decorated by the Queen of England thus Queen and because he ran the diamond industry in London Underground for the whole of the Second World War so at what point did you hear my parents story is an incredible when my father got a tip-off that my mother was going to be picked up because they thought she was
Christian and living you know married to a Jewish man and then she was going to actually be picked up the next day from you know and put into a him and so they happen to know a they got some guide and they drove as far as they could and they actually cross the pyrenees by foot and got to spain and then eventually Tomas I mean I'm cutting the story very short know what Gabriel watch Nutella Japan food I had my sister who was only three at the time was baptized to save her life in case they were picked up so that she could you know
in a convent in a small little convent that they had found in France and eventually they got a passage on a ship in my said and the this boat was going to Rio to Rio de Janeiro and resolve and my father arrived with ten dollars in his pocket and heard his name called on the pier and he couldn't understand who would know that he was on the ship but one of his friends from Belgium heard that he you know his story you know how they then I don't know how they got to know and helped him find an apartment and gave him the financial backing
to start a business and he was there for nine years but unfortunately i was born in brazil in rio found the country very very incorrect and then went to suffer and I was also just before my fourth birthday there's nowhere to cape town were to Coco yep we went to captain you were four years old when you went to take Denise and I spoke Portuguese only Portuguese wow so that must have been quite a transition for you it was an actually remember my first at school you know my parents dropping me off at this little school in cape town and was in a church building
and they left me and I couldn't speak to anybody nobody understood me and I was always a quite a chatterbox and couldn't understand why know where you could understand me you know speaking Portuguese that children adapt and you know I learned English that way because at her my parents actually spoke German my mother really never mastered Portuguese very well in Brazil she she knew enough to go to the store and you know that she mostly spoke German and French and they spoke German at home did they eventually learn English as well oh yes I learned English yep i use my dad spoke English you know
had a big he had the biggest diamond cut punishing a dream captain so tell us about your childhood kept her what was that like it was all I can say is growing up in captain in the time then we grew up i was born in 44 so i was there too you know 50s even my husband and I both the same age it was the most awesome time in captain I don't say that the politics of red I mean as a young child I couldn't understand and especially after a project I became politically active where I was blacklisted for 15 years but because I had
grown up in a home where anything anything I mean if it was a teaspoon that was made in Germany my father would throw that I mean it was just like so much hatred and they never never never spoke of their history I kind of picked up things and eventually he wrote it down but a very very minor part of his history in fact there are many many pockets that I have no clue of what happened he did not want to speak about his fam is the 97 of his family that was killed he did know through somebody who was announced with ashwins first cousin that
his mom and his brother and a few of the aunties had been killed on Yom Kippur so you're Kippur was a very emotional day for him he was very I mean they were very they never never spoke about anything my father never ever spoke about his family and if you did he always it was always brushed off and it's very sad because i used to say especially when my kids were born in captain I i would say please just do it quietly in a room just tape it and give us history so that the kids could have the history because this is going to die
one day and he would say I'll do it I'll do it I'll do but he never did what were your fondest memories of living in South Africa either in childhood or work as a teenager my fondest memories is the freedom that we had and the outdoor living and the beaches and the people they were wonderful wonderful people and the community was a really rich Jewish community and the values I think that we picked up were phenomenal because they still carry on here here in Dallas the values that I I was brought up can give me an example well I mean holidays were very traditional I
went to I was I really wanted to learn about it even though my parents were not they never pushed me I went I took two buses and a train to get to Hebrew school on a Saturday it was just like I wanted to learn about that my parents even didn't want to light candles on a Friday but my sister didn't ever care about it that I was always I don't know what it was in me it just I really really wanted the Jewishness were the Jewish youth groups to belong oh yes I belonged to the temple to our to our shoe group that was mostly
what we did we we didn't have groups like the BBY oh and think there was her born him and things I didn't really go to that I was actually a member of thee I was very active in the shoe the youth group in the show you mentioned of being blacklisted what did you do well I went to college and to me it was horrendous that you know because you were born with black skin you couldn't go to college or you couldn't go to school that you had separate entrances very much like the South was here but it was really terrible till I was the years
when Mandela was you know put into prison and there was a lot of a lot of Jewish kids that were very active against the government and I tended a tremendous amount of meetings and actually went to johannesburg on a train where we were going to protest and heard that they were going to arrest a lot of the youth and phoned my father and said you know i do not want to do anything that will upset your business so would you give me an etiquette and I'm I will not walk the protest and was very very lucky that I didn't because they picked up a lot
of kids and gave him 24 hours to leave the country so I had my mail opened my parents phones were tapped for many years even into my married life you know things were and I think I was watched till I virtually live like that pretty but it was something that I had to do I mean I still do not believe I mean having been my parents my father losing 97 of his family and then having a whole nation persecuted like this just for the color of their skin was just to me it was just horrendous I mean to me is just like cuddle driven to
earth not we were actually in Hebrew school together and we were in Hebrew clauses together but I never I knew the family my sister he would they were very very well-known family kept on this for his uncle storage a temple and we then we I mean after school I went my own way went and I did social work and then actually spent a year in and to it where I didn't travel a an aunt of mine was in a travel agent which was really not a real one but we called them on and I stayed there for over a year in end to it but
it was a wonderful part of my life and when I came back I met Michael he came in to book a trip I ran a travel agent in Captain and everybody said you've got to go after him he's got a fabulous call I said come on Gabriel as any rate he did ask me out and we went out and we had a very very fast court trip I mean I would I was 25 when I got married which was very which was old in those days and we started going out in May June we got engaged in august and got married in november so we'd
be married 43 million 44 years so what was what was the impetus for your family to live south africa and did you come to rugby fidelis yep well Michael and I really I was very influenced by my parents history and did not want my children to go to the army there I had two boys and a daughter and I at there's time that they said you know soon as they were 14 or something they had to endless to the army so that after school and we didn't know what what was going to happen I mean things are not right there but certainly they were called
up for the army and Michael a nice at a very early in our marriage decided that if we could we would leave and we gradually did apply and it took us five years to get a visa which is absolutely nuts and once we we tried we had been to the States but I had never never been to dallas and we were first originally going to dirtys to stanford to connecticut because we had very very good friends of Michael's family living there and michael had gone from his family business to the diamond industry which my father had been teaching him for it for your number of
years so that we could immigrate because he couldn't leave you know with what he was he had been pulled into the family very young age so did not you know finish college and I applied to get a visa just to come and I had three babies and they wouldn't even let me come to see Dennis when we had made a decision to come to the south rather was the oil crisis and you know we decided we knew two families wouldn't well but not that well and we had no family and we decided the biggest wrench was leaving South Africa I mean leaving your whole family
his family he's got 29 verse cousins I mean he's a mark yeah father was one of 10 also from Poland a rich uni and his mum was one of four so there was tons of cousins and a tremendous support system and they would not give me a to even come and visit you so we landed here and had never never been to dallas we thought well the worst thing could happen we won't like it and we'll just move on because it'll be our unit our family which is all we had and we'll just move on and that's here we are only three years ahead I'll
go with your first impression what are you doing well we got off the plane and the kids were in all first of all there was snow on the ground we never got to know so it was februari the eighth nineteen eighty and they were and then there was 24 hours of TV which in their eyes was we had an hour one hour from six to seven or seven to eight so to them thus and channels I mean every other than I mean you could get so their impression was TV and snow on the ground children I mean there were 47 and nine so and here
we are 33 years later you mentioned you came in nineteen eighty was snow but that happened to have also been Lee the year of the massive heat wave how did you deal with that summer oh boy I mean we just bought our house which we still in in on warmest and I mean it got to like a hundred and something in no time output for a hundred days or every view unbelievable asked his mom I'd need to put a pool in I mean you know those days didn't even add to that much so we decided to put a pool in and out we were sending
tapes and I was very very close to my mother-in-law and I said we're putting a pool in the yard which nobody called at the yard in it was a god and she said where are you guys and the team came back said where are you going to hang up your washing because it kept on we didn't have dryers so she said where you going to hang up the washing I said well not in this yard we don't have yards like in Quetta was we as we actually had so much to do and adjust to that we actually cook very well in that means how did
how did you find the the folks that were already here from South Africa was it easy to immigrate into the community you know they were only about eight families when we arrived then it started Oh exploding like within like 1980 at the end of the year middle of the year and the end of the year there were a lot of people coming in but when we came there was just around eight nine families and they were wonderful they were very very it took us under their wing they took us to shul that took us that brought us with our container hadn't come they brought us
blankets them because we just had a higher beds and they think we bought our house and we had no to the kids thought it was wonderful that could just run around a mac with no furniture in it and we just had the basics we had beds and we had we brought that dog from South Africa that was the best thing that we ever did because they had something from from home who were some of those original families there was the lure ease songs all rooms and blurry and there was the stresses there was the cones there are Dell and Lawrence cone it was we became
very very friendly with mill became like a sister unfortunately when mill and Brian elman and myself and else was there we're rose and been sick oh no no that can't be Rosen bedzie look we had we celebrate holidays together so she's just a road away from me Street away from me in fact she was breakfast at my house we're very very friendly a wonderful family no they came a number of years after us and what about that what about the general Jersey community how open we were very very fortunate my mom's twin sister had her best friend was Stein hot and I don't know if
you know Ron and Phyllis de menthe hearing in Dallas and she said you know she's got a son and daughter and he is the president of the Bank and i'll give you their number and you get so we were able when we got here Ron and Phyllis were just unbelievable I mean they became our family they gave Michael and office in his building at Valley View and we had our money transferred into his bank you know it was just incredible they gave us a party barbecue and they introduced us to a lot of American we've always been friendly with a lot of Americans we felt
that we had to integrate a lot of the South Africans don't integrate I mean they still keep very much on there you know between themselves and we felt that this was not beneficial to the kids or to us that we needed to but Phyllis and Ron without them I could say it would have been very very difficult now that the children integrated under the community my eldest Gavin he he came back with an American accent within two weeks he was calling a grass I was saying waited I mean he picked up an American accent talk so I mean all the kids talk not like us
but I mean but they integrated amazing amazing liebherr just the first summer was a little difficult because we got here in February school kind of ended we've just got the house and everything we put them into the JCC to camp and they were bussed or four things with no air conditioning and it was 100 I mean and they came back with all these bites oh wow well Wow and soul said you know what I really sold her a ring without doctor he said I really think you have to pull the kids out because they're not climate asked I mean look at these kids I mean
they they they were speaking to you know so they really didn't but once they started school again you know in school started after the summer there was no coming back I mean they just integrated into sports and everything just fell into place the kids adjusted amazingly well did you have a career I thought yeah I side when i worked at hillcrest travel for about four years five years and was very lucky because I could choose my hours i could it was right two minutes from my house so i could go and work in the morning pick up the kids take them to wherever it i
was always in the car and because my eldest Gavin was accent marks Justin and one Justin was at prestonwood and Monique was at the JCC so I was I was just in the car like all the mothers today but I could choose I could go off to work I had a key so I could do and travel was very different wasn't on the computer you had to write out your tickets you had if everything was so different but it wasn't black cape time and it was the travel was and then it suddenly became computerized and everything and then I stopped working when you came into
the room I am I admired a piece of jewelry you said you were a designer is that something that you did professionally or now I just do my own thing I have done a few little drawings but very few but I do paint a time tell us about your painting and what type of training you do I about 24 years ago I really wanted to go to art school and my parents said it wasn't for a Jewish girl to go to art school because was been heaping plate kept on and my parents were pretty conservative my father especially my mom was a very German very
I don't want to say abrasive but she was she was she was a quite a hard lady I think a lot of it now that I'm older anything I can you know her life was not an e you know was she had a wonderful life optical you know in South Africa room and a lot of the years in rear but her earlier years were not easy she was not an easy lady and my dad was the softer one of the two but they'd wouldn't let me go to art school and I said to Michael one day and I'm going to go to Oscar there's one
right up the road and I went and I started dabbling and just painting what I wanted to do and JS art studio my grandson goes there and then our Father dawn to or just within and I i do very diverse things I actually do a lot of African and stuff that just comes out of you know and I just find it very relaxing and the girls that I paint we could we do we can get help but if we want to just do whatever we want to do we just pay for virtually the time spent in the art studio so they had your art exhibited
no they keep I'm saying I must I'm a little I don't think it's that good my husband thinks differently but I friends you know that I'm a little bit shy about that I've sold a few pieces that i have i have not had an arctic swish I'm not like Veronique I'm Jonas she's really great he paints well I'd like to ask you a question about the laws other than the apartheid laws which of course we knew were very different were there any other laws that you found a different between South Africa and the United States either with regard to gender or anything else the cultures
different but not really no not really you know if there hadnt and and i think most of us will I thinking well maybe because I was politically involved I think if there hadn't been a black problem there would have been a Jewish problem because in Cape Town there were a lot of Malaysian people which was Arab and they definitely focused on on the black population and the we we had mostly them along to the colored people in Quetta but if they hadn't I'm sure they were there were numerous things that happened in the lap in the last few years old I was living there that
were not so there were some things incidents against the Jewish people and I'm sure that they're there is I don't know today I'm so out of what happens in in South Africa I know from my friends that I'm still very very very friendly with the things are not great but then never really asked our duty problem were there any real major adjustments that you had to make when you came here or was it relatively easy I wouldn't say it was easy fit all my husband's had to start of business I did miss the beauty I mean Cape Town was just stunning and the beauty was
just that was something that I really really missed the people you did miss your friends from school from growing up and your support system that you had of your family and your that were always there and dropping in that was something that yeah that was something that we had on a Sunday your house nobody phone they just dropped it if you were there you were there so on a Sunday our house was like very open house I could have like 14 15 people sitting at the pool people were very casual and say we coming for coffee now can we come yeah sure we'd love to
have you it was very very more open here or was more formal so in that way we had to adjust to that and I think the support system of my and Michael's family was a tremendous family of his sister was very and my parents you go back offer no no I the last time I think it's a seven eight years ago I really i find it very hard to go back it's not the same place anymore I don't have any family sorry general I don't have anybody I didn't have any first cousins and I had no grandparents on either side so for me it's it's
not a draw to go back anymore well Michael it is he's got a sister there and his family still live there where you have to pick up and leave obviously it's difficult there's things that you can bring with you and things that you must leave behind what was the most important thing for you to bring with you besides your physical family and what was the most difficult the most difficult thing to leave behind without a doctor's family family and friends with without a doc not any material things was there any particular material thing that was most important to bring yes but I got it today
yes my father took 25 years he all his life wanted to give a Torah in memory of his family and having been so except in to our sure and this Torah was brought my uncle that ran the diamond industry in London hood moved to London Hill him of luck had God and Torah from Israel and my father flew well he picked it up from Israel my uncle and my father went from Cape Town to London picked up the Torah and held it all the way to South Africa and then when Robert and Lucy when we came here and it got nearer Gavin was already nine
and Justin was seven my biggest wish was for them to read after this Torah and my parents wanted us to come back for the vomits and there was like no where we were the kids had friends there was no way we were going to do this and talking backwards and forwards my father donated money for a classroom and they actually gave him the Torah and he brought it to dallas it's well-traveled and it went to sheriff and all my kids read out of it and it's now a nun hsüeh Torah because we we started with the beginning of our Torah and their gave us the
Torah it was only on learn to share it and it's not an share and my grandson my one bread son is 11 already kid and so in 2015 on the fifteenth of May he's going to be reading and please God I'll be and then I've got another grandson of his little brother who's eight so he's God that will remain here because you know and that would be a heritage to to the kids but really nothing else was other than family and friends was the other stuff was really immaterial the other members of the firm would have fallen belong after you a smack on our mother
and father did come here they came about nine years after it was not an easy they were nearly 18 your parents were Charles and her father yes tell us tell us about your parents and their life here Adela it was sad and I can only say that it was sad because my father store had his business in South Africa it was run by my cousin George Bush and it was his cousin of his and my father was like a fish out of water he really struggled here he he hated it here he couldn't he couldn't adjust to anything we made him go for driving lessons
he drove but my goodness it was it was like a magnet getting in the car with him it was better that he didn't drive he had to look after my mother he hit a lot from us regarding my mother's health she was not easy and he became more of a shell of a man yeah he wasn't that he had a strong personality and it he became he really became a shell of a guy yeah because all he did was go to the supermarket and he didn't adjust he didn't even adjust to we invited introduced into a lot of the parents of you know kids that
came here but they just he they just didn't find themselves here but was your mother involved in volunteer or her the photography she didn't want to even come to see what about you leverage what about you are you involved involved I was very very involved in the synagogue and I was sisterhood president at on Shane was with adwords i worked with pullman with the russian jews that can she and i ran that that group i did a lot of work and mac monique and Justin went to solomon schecter at that time was called Simon shaked up norm and was very mug actually worked in the
office with a defense team voluntary and so yeah I've taken a little break from from the bottom three but I'm looking to give my teeth into something that again because that been looking after my grandchild is there anything in particular that you think you might like each other no I've just like something to ask me to do something I'm sure you clean ya hayat honey come tomorrow so what cultural traditions have you been able to maintain from South Africa whether any in particular at work that you recall that we're bout your family and that you brought forward not South African not Jewish yeah I mean
just the holidays like everybody else I mean not know were there any particular foods that were oh yeah we we still eat a lot of them I mean it's not curry with a Malaysian dish love curry and a certain you know lakhs also it's it's an Indian you know we ate a lot of different kind of foods there in South Africa but I don't say that there's anything in particular that have you passed along the recipes to your children well my daughter my daughter in laws are not that big cooks they all come to me on Friday nights and I'm still hanging in there with
everybody arriving at me and my daughter's not married so please God when she does does she cook with you at all she doesn't show much it but she's really very she's busy at the moment she's just published a second book across the red divides which is the story of my parents crossing the pyrenees but in her own she's put her own fiction into it because it at the problem yes and you can get it on Amazon across the great divides and it's money great a road now across the great the Great Divide and it's monique Roy thank you and she she was she spoke at
the JCC at the book fair for her first book it's a children's book once upon a time it's an ugly little pockets and Jewish or said Jewish theme and she spoke so she's been very busy since she hasn't had time to cook and none of them are cooking at the moment I have Rosh Hashanah had grown fast so when you were growing up were your appearance Zionists or were you and your friends scientists at all good night tell it tell us about how important as real was to you as a present as a child well my mom my mom's brother immigrated to Israel and I
hadn't met him so my parents actually sent me at the age of 13 to visit him and I stayed with a cousin of work the niece of my mom's brother it's worth and if you had told me I had to go home to Cape Town there was I wanted to stay in Israel I mean from that day I was from the day I arrived there and stayed with this family who were due to put i mean i stand in a room with two other three kids or there were four of us in a room and we were able to walk up and down diesel god
and it was just she had most wonderful friends who and I was there for nearly two months and it was just I didn't want to go home I really really never wanted to go and I've been to Israel at times I love Israel I could have easily emigrated to Israel not Michael but I love Israel have any other members of your family it would really sucks his cousin later jordan to israel yeah Oh a lot of my mom's family emigrated to Israel my father lost you know 9077 a lot of my moms and me are in Israel I store today or are there any other
things that you would find important to tell us as a legacy to your family about your experience either in South Africa or your experience since coming to dallas such as wood anything that we might have left out in questioning I don't think so you know my years in Cape Town were really wonderful years and my schooling using my traveling I traveled very early with my dad every year they went to Europe and I went at the aid from the age of 13 I used to go with them or and and the first trip I did was to Israel and they came to pick me up
but I was very fortunate kid in it in South Africa I was it came from a very unfortunate home and I was able to have most or whatever anything I wanted and I was a spoiled little girl well I want to thank you so much for being with us this morning I enjoyed news you your story is wonderful we really appreciate your I appreciate you doing this