Rolf Paul
Rolf Paul traced his father's family in Germany back to 1800, to his great-great-grandfather Aaron Paul, who had thirteen children. His grandfather ran a men's and boys' clothing and department store in Neuss, where Rolf grew up living above the store. His father, Erik, and uncles and brothers-in-law had all served in the German army, and an uncle on his mother's side, Eric, was killed in action in World War One. The family, deeply rooted and proud of their German identity, faced growing persecution as the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their rights. Rolf attended a Catholic kindergarten and then commuted by streetcar across the Rhine to a Jewish school in Duesseldorf, where he witnessed Nazi youth throwing rocks at Jewish children.
On the day of Kristallnacht in November 1938, Rolf saw the Duesseldorf synagogue in flames and returned home, ending his schooling in Germany. His father was arrested, and his mother secured his release by showing that the family was preparing to leave. Relatives who had emigrated to America earlier, including his Aunt Martha and Uncle Izzy, worked to bring the family over. In 1938, when Rolf was eight, the family sailed to the United States, ultimately settling in Indianapolis. He recalled arriving dressed as a German child in short pants and a leather backpack, quickly learning English, and navigating a school world where Jews and Gentiles rarely mixed.
Rolf earned a degree in organic chemistry from Purdue University and began working for American Cyanamid's Lederle division before being drafted into the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to radiation research at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. He married and built a career, living for many years in New Jersey while working in New York. Decades later, invited back by the city of Neuss, he and his wife returned to Germany, where a researcher helped him learn the fates of family members: his grandparents were shot in Poland and an aunt was deported to Riga. A lifelong bridge player who took up the game at seventeen, Rolf became a Ruby Life Master and continued playing several times a week.
Full Transcript
we are rolling this is an oral history interview with Rob all on June 15 2017 conducted by May Siebel welcome Rob we're so glad that you're with us today please start by going back as far as you can in your family's history and telling us about that okay on my father's side I can go back to 1800 my great-great grandfather it was Aaron Paul that was his name in 1800 how far back beyond that have any idea he had 13 children which my grandfather Paul Paul was one this is a key my survival my grandfather had five children that lived there were two more still
my father's oldest brother Leo older sister Hannah the third brother Max and my father Erik Aunt Martha on my mother's side I can only go back as far as my grandfather unfortunately when you're young you don't have the same interest in history my grandfather moved to noise in the year 1900 and bought a department store there which he started after the men's and boys clothing store and I have no idea where he got the money to do this I'm very curious but I will never find out because my mother's dead and everybody else is dead involved with that and when I found out more history
of noise in 1903 there was a pogrom and noise I wonder how my grandfather survived it but he did now my mother had two brothers and the sister the oldest brother was named Eric and then my mother Hannah and her sister Martha and Willie Willie was four years old when he died in the playground accident so I never knew him Eric was in the German army in World War one and was killed in action and it's quite interesting I didn't find the pictures but I had pictures of him when he came home once a year during the first world war and each picture as time
goes on he looks more and more depressed so I keep doing what this future was anyway I grew up in boys and when Hitler came into power they passed something called the Nuremberg Laws were which said that Jews could not go to public school and they couldn't go to theater movies it's very restrictive and so my father talked to the Catholic people at Ranelagh kindergarten Catholic kindergarten and they were not as pro nasty as the state and they were to have me attend the Catholic kindergarten and it was I walked there from my house I went with any fellow who lived down the street from
me helmet : anyway he and I walked through this part to the kindergarten anyway I was never out to play with some of which was because we lived on the busy intersections we lived above the clothing store you rented out the third floor and one day I know the why they let me out to play with the neighborhood kids and a couple of days later my father and I were walking down the street and we encountered one of the nuns from the kindergarten my father said allo to her what do I sleep out that way that's what the neighborhood kids had taught me they were
all in the Hitler Youth my father couldn't say anything to me because if he said something you know this five-year-old child concealed my father told me I can't say Heil Hitler and then there was a law that said if somebody said how Hitler to you you had to return it so if this important them did return the salute anyway that was the first and last time ever went out to play with any of the kids and I promptly forgot all the saluting and stuff anyway then when they hello was picking me up and he showed me surreptitiously he found a knife a pocketknife that somebody
had thrown away the reason they throw it away is a spring on it and broken so that the blade just fell out anyway this was a big thrill for us we were never allowed to touch knives so we went through the park and we stopped at a park bench and picked up some sticks and started whittling away time passed and the kindergarten called my father where's Ralph so he followed the path we were supposed to take and found us promptly got a spanking at that time in Germany any an adult could spank any child in this baby boobs or somebody else's and then we went
on to the kindergarten now at Christmastime st. Nicholas showed up in the kindergarten if you were good you got a present and if you weren't you've got a bundle of sticks with which to spank you with so we all form a circle around st. Nicholas and all the kids were called up except Helmut myself and by that time we were already in tier 2 we're sure we're going to get the stick so we were called up and we got a nice lecture and he kindly gave us a present after almost aesthetics and you know I was a sophomore in college before I ever cut another class anyway then stepping forward to Crystal night now my father my grandfather had a good reputation and because people knew that his son have been killed the German army by the way my father all his brothers and his brothers-in-law all served in the German
army these are some metals that he wanted Wow and he belong to the Jewish War veterans you know the truth behind cross he's got the young cows here to show you this just to show that my father all his relatives thought they were German anyway when crystal knife came they did not really come into our house but they did throw a stink bomb into the store that was underneath where we lived on the second floor and from then on a soldier that brownshirt the SI was stationed in front of the store and told people not to come in I have no idea how much that
affected the store financially but now after I finished kindergarten because of the Nuremberg Laws all the Jewish teachers lost their jobs and the the town next door the noise disel door and trying to find out the population I the population of noise in 1931 was 7888 I could not find out the population of disel Dorf but assuming the ratio stayed the same in 2015 noise had 159 some population and disel doors 612 so I give you assuming the ratio holds gives you an idea anyway the the teachers that have lost their jobs a started the school for Jewish children and luckily that a streetcar from
noise to disembark stopped in front of our house and stopped in front of the synagogue and so at age six I commuted from noise across the rhine to distil darf each day my father first showed me how to do this and I got a pass on the street car and the I went through the first grade there every Friday and every other Friday we had gym and there wasn't the gymnasium in the synagogue so we walked to a place that they had found somewhere in the country and I remember distinctly the Nazi youth kids standing across the street and throwing rocks at us with the
intention of hitting us I mean the teasing or something luckily they have very important I don't recall that ever hit anybody but we could not do anything back to them anyway the year passed and then the next year in November of the crystal night and so when I left to go to discipline my father said if you see anything strange or unusual get back on the streetcar and come home so I went to disembark and there was a big crowd around the synagogue and it was going up in flames I decided it was unusual they got back from the street it was the end of
my schooling in Germany now my father was arrested that day or two after a specific date after night and my mother went to stop and convinced them we were ready to leave Germany and she showed all the papers and everything and so they lent them out but we had a certain amount of time to get out of Germany and don't have to go back a little bit my my 13 brothers and sisters with my grandfather half of them came to the u.s. tonight sleep 18 on the middle eighteen hundred's and they kept my family kept contact with the people they lost contact during World War one but then they regained contact with some of not with all of them and the couple of them had done very well in this country there was a cousin of my father's just of ephraim who had a factory in Indianapolis they made silk stockings eventually went over to nylons I came in real real silk and my Aunt Martha the youngest sister of my father her husband uncle Izzy olicity grain broker and when the nuremberg laws passed jewish grain brokers lost their job
losing him and so they appealed to me from some and he brought them over to the US and then my Aunt Martha worked to have the rest of the family come over she contacted us over and over until he was convinced to bring the family over now the attitude of the American Jews and bringing people over they like to bring young people there were less interested in old people presumably because young people could earn a living than they weren't dependent anyway so [Music] son of any of the brothers or sisters and then they brought over and uncle Izzy and Louis wolf he was related through
his wife to the polls and he had a department store in Indianapolis and uncle Indy went to work there repacking stuff that they decided to return to the manufacturer anyway then they brought uncle leo and that's Elmo over then uncle max let's stay and share my father was born what years were these they first started coming over here must be thirty five or six they share myzel where my father was born they had a population of two under there really country village and I remember visiting a couple of times in an outhouse primitive it was there and my father went to school only through a
grade school in noise then he became an apprentice in the clothing store came back he went back to work in the clothing business and worked his way up to being a buyer which is some probably got connected with my grandfather and Noyes who was getting old needs some help in running the store and so my father came and then he married my mother anyway then my Uncle Leo and his wife came over and it started out at that point that you couldn't bring any money with you so Uncle Leo decided he would invest in silverware and try to sell it here better not to be
a mistake with this German silverware was not in style nobody was interested in later on when I was working my my co-workers who was a musicians and he knew somebody who came over who was a musician and he bought a very valuable violin which he was with himself so the great aunt woman's luck anyway then my uncle max and his family came over and then it was our turn at that point this was in 1938 1938 if you brought anything with you you you could take $15 like a week's salary anyway if you had new furniture and or anything new clothes whatever you had to
pay a hundred percent tax on it if it was five years old you paid seventy five percent tax and anything older than that you pay the 50 percent tax Enrique oh he's big lists of things in Panama why my father bought me two harmonicas professional harmonicas and I think was all excited about them they got packed up we came to this country obviously there was one last hope we do anything with finally when I was in my teenage I figured out if I took the nail this was a key with a hollow stem if I took a nail and pounded it into the stem so
it was really tight and then a pair of pliers I could turn the lock and I open it up it was totally empty the story anyway we when we were leaving another thing my father decided since couldn't take any money with him we were going to sail first-class and then we'll spend as much so that and we were he wanted to go on an American ship the USS Roosevelt to get off German soil as soon as possible if you are on the German ship he was still in German soil well there Roosevelt ran aground so and we went to Hamburg which is where the port
was and we stayed in a hotel at that which had a big sign up front no Jews allowed but the person around the hotel must have had some sympathy because to get into a hotel you need a pass see these passwords have this peak J stamped on them which shows that you're Jewish but have been anyway so after the Roosevelt ran aground my father was hustling around takes this on another ship because we only have so much time otherwise he would get arrested again he found the German line and we got on that and this was across the Atlantic Ocean anyway one day my parents
got seasick and they never came out of there happening but being 8 years old didn't bother me and I have the run of the ship which was interesting I went to the movies that they show there they have some gambling the kind of horse race where they had horses and you people threw dice I was just an observer but I didn't understood how it worked whatever then on the chairmanship they serve five meals a day you had breakfast lunch and dinner and then in the morning like soup or something in the afternoon this was a man that used to play and they started kidding me
because I was and then one night it got so bad that the sailors came into our cabin over the pole and my father and the other Jewish man got together in the prayer but we survived anyway then we arrived in America and to New Rochelle where there was one of their relatives my grandfather then we went to Baltimore they messed the bottle as I think about it all the tickets still in Germany because money to buy these things the woman who was related had just died we miss mr. by a few months but many relative of hers there who had been in the Merchant Marine and he gave me a compass which I stick to Indianapolis and all our furniture had been packed and after this crate was standing on the curb and after we had unpacked that a some farmer came by and wanted to buy it for any chicken anyway when I went to school for the first time I was dressed as a German kid which was short pants long wool stockings and a leather backpack and naturally everybody that was hilarious nobody seen anything like that then my Louis Walsh wife Jenny came took
charge of things and got me some normal clothes and I still laughed these days because all the kids have backpacks now they've never seen a backpack before times how are you accepted into the school well once I got dressed normally you Masari I had a cousin Peter's in time he actually was not true cousin we were related because his aunt Selma was married to my Uncle Leo I was putting in his class and one of the interesting things age 8 you pick it up very quickly and whereas my parents had a lot of trouble picking it up particularly my mother who didn't have much contact
her contact was really listening to the radio so she never really got that fluent pretty fluent and of my relatives I could see if you came over at my age eight to ten you've been totally losing anyway then once I learned English I was somewhat excited it's always a little bit of and then I got to high school and it was the same thing the Jews and Gentiles did not mix I mean there was also racial things blacks went to separate high school and see them and many years later my wife and I went on a tour of Spain and Portugal and I ran into
a woman who had gone to my high school which is Shortridge High School in Indianapolis but who was four years behind me so I never know there and she had gone to some of their reunions and I asked her since do some Gentiles in my a generation never mix I said what happened when you went back to their reunion she said the same thing Gentile at separately so did your family become involved with the synagogue and so forth when I left home went the school of per dude got a degree in organic chemistry and then after I finished college I started working for American Cyanamid
company they're literally division which is the drug and after about a half year I got drafted because I had gotten deferred all during college and spent after basic training was sent to Washington DC Robert Walter Reed Hospital where my enema is popular that was because they were at that time they were very concerned about atomic bombs landing and trying to figure out try on what you do to the victims which ones you can save in which you can't and since the the prevention of cruelty to animal organization because SPCA spc right they wouldn't let you do Studies on dogs or cats but they didn't no
objection to pigs and it actually turned out to be a good thing because pigs metabolism is much closer to humans and dogs or cats and so they would radiate the pigs with various doses of x-rays and then find out what happened to them and turned out if they don't use this terminology anymore but if they use 200 mentions which is a level of radiation they recovered 400 it was 5050 and 800 they all died it was a pretty horrible death I mean the defecated their intestines are often [ __ ] pretty gruesome anyway then after we done all the study some pigs to an actual atomic bomb
test and we sent out this test and they brought the pigs back and at first they look pretty sickly but then they all recovered and turned out that they had put him in a cage which was have solid metal walls on it so they didn't get exposed to any radiation at all for there's ladies started working next door who's Jewish Knightsbridge so decided to investigate getting married anyway in about looked and look I can't find the document in something like 1980 yearly any of these the city of Germany decided to invite back all the Jews that had gotten more or less kicked out noise our
city of noise a number of German cities did this and then eventually noise got around to it and so my wife and I went and I hadn't been I called her and she was early my mother's best friend but I called her an and all my life and Irma and I told her about and she was interested and she came with us she was quite a bit older interesting history to she they went to Luxembourg and then France and France got invaded and she was sent to a holding camp before being sent to a concentration camp her husband was sent before her and killed in
Auschwitz but with the help of a Catholic nun she escaped from this holding camp and then hid out in the woods for wishing that her second husband anyway she went with us and after the end of the war my mother tried and they have some letters in huge bother trying to find out what happened to her parents and her sister well she could find out was that her parents had been sent at raising stock which was sort of the show concentration camp and then they would sent Heath and that was the end of it and her sister she never found out what happened to her
well the noise had hired a Miss barium who who was able to get a lot more information called Jews and boys and he had found out that my grandparents had been sent to a row railroad siding in Poland and shot and then my aunt who could have she had the papers to get out of Germany but she sucks show us to stay with her parents she lasted a half here before they sent her off they sent her to Riga Lithuania on a railroad car and local Holocaust Museum as a half a railroad car anyway when this when I went back to noise I was able
to contact a woman who had been in Riga and she didn't know my aunt but she knew of her and she was too sick to actually come to this reunion but I corresponding with her and she sent me a letter describing the transportation and how they were a little car so that if somebody died they couldn't even collapse to the floor they were so tight and they stayed in there for well over a week so you can imagine the placement of something thank heaven and she describes reaching out through the bars this was in the winter time and getting icicles in so they could have
a little bit of water anyway again once they were in the Riga they they were kept cold and ill fed obviously trying to kill them they their job was to sort clothes that came in from the concentration camps and then send it back to Germany anyways this fellow also had a little exhibit in the museum there and he had found a slip of paper been arrested migrant parents which was very emotional to see anyway he also found out him described in this book that my grandfather was forced to sell his store greatly reduce value I think I remember the number he got 30,000 marks for
which were put in a bank the bank was and they couldn't that was a fair amount of money they couldn't have spent that in the rest time that they were in Germany but it just disappeared now all the Jews once he was out of their house they had to live in special house for Jews and mentions of my grandfather moon other Jewish women had to sweep the streets in Germany I think back of that big grin from there so much a very dignified man picturing him sweeping streets how did they find you for this reunion there when the Jews came over to Germany they started
a newspaper on the Aufbau which means reconstruction and my parents took this until they died and survived my father 984 he who is a before my mother died at 75 and she had a lot of problems she had had scarlet fever when she was a child followed by rheumatic fever which affected her heart and I remember of my wife and took her to a doctor to near us we lived in New Jersey but right on the borderline is live controller from New York where I worked and she took my mother to a doctor and doctor told my wife privately that he was surprised my mother
was still alive her heart was so bad anyway the trip to Germany was quite interesting we stayed with a little bit my wife and I visited Israel and we were in a kibbutz or even a German the young German couple and they were so different from the Germans that I had known I had always decided I didn't want to go back to Germany there's a graveyard but when I met this couple I decided maybe we should go back after all and we afford we were invited by a noise we went back in the actually visited noise and saw the building that they had built because
my store building above it was totally destroyed my cousin alfred was with the occupation he actually gotten drafted in the first draft in 1938 so he spent quite a while in the army here and but he came through in the occupation where me and he wrote us that house was totally gone and another interesting he was involved was involved with one of the trials I can't remember the slice or something like that who was the head of propaganda who particularly had anti-semitic propaganda striker striker anyway he had to be a witness strikers hated this guy for survival in southern France and then finally he got
to the Battle of the Bulge and he was hit by a bullet so close to his heart that they never removed and he also had a hand grenade blow up in his face and he said he was lying there too and officers came and they were discussing whether they should kill him or not and he couldn't understand them and he didn't dare say a thing and finally they decided they wouldn't kill him and they took toothbrush and clean the shrapnel from his eyes and then he was recaptured by the Americans and they did a terrific job on him and he his face was almost normal
it looked like maybe had a little acne when he was a kid and they took huge magnets over his eyes to pull out the more of the shrapnel and interesting to find out how long were you in the service only you have here there was a special deal that came along 57 that if you enlisted you could be in for a half year and then seven and a half years of the inactive reserves I just meant that their time at Walter Reed on that project really sort of tickly gonna be Washington DC in those days this is before terrorism it was just a wonderful place
if an embassy had a concert you could just walk into concerts on the steps of the Capitol nothing costs anything so hurt someone on our beat Eddie which at that time I think was $35 someone really was spending the furthermore the most of the many people and officers and there were so few enlisted men it was enlisted that you got the officers like fried okra so I wanted trace you came to Indianapolis and you went to Purdue which I know is in Indiana and then after college where did you go you went into the service then well first I went to work for not happy
okay and then they got those letters that either unless they're going to be granted for two years or so pent-up that then I went back spent the rest of my career not very likely with the third house in from the border but at that time the taxes were cheaper in New Jersey well here at that time they didn't have a decent club twice they had a two table game which is ridiculous and so thinking that the bridge was much better in the Massachusetts area in Massachusetts very important I want to get to that because I know I see you at the bridge club two three
times a week I'm there and you may be there more often fun when did you take that bridge when I was in college at age 17 the freshman and there were three guys who played bridge and they needed a fourth they said we'll teach you and look the fact that some of them occasionally make anti-semitic comments one of the things which I don't know I'm sort of half ashamed when I was in high school knew there was enough anti-semitism and kept me from making friends I decided in college I just wouldn't make a big fuss about being Jewish and so in my undergraduate career I
just never mentioned anything I didn't go to the Hillel but I didn't make a big big deal about it and then when I got to graduate school and decided was going to confront people I was going to put it out there they liked it fine if they didn't that was their problem but I remember once what has an undergraduate some people are running for class president and that guy came around to my room and said there are two people running he said you don't want to vote for X he's Jewish you know I have to get back a little bit to the people coming over
we were my parents and I were the last ones to get over they had quotas in those days and we were early enough we got in from a German quota but my aunt Hannah Arthur had a job in a Jewish synagogue and he didn't want to leave it so they waited a bit too late and they couldn't get into this country from the German quota and so my aunt Hannah and her daughter Rita had to go too heavily to come in under the Italian quota and uncle the Philippines endless lucky he got out of the Philippines before the Japanese came back and my grandmother as
I said they was late seventies had to go to listen to come into the Portuguese odor and luckily Jewish organizations took care of her because she was already old enough that she wasn't totally with it anymore and she eventually came to this country and my Aunt Martha uncle is he lived in the house next door to us and they took in my grandmother because they didn't have any children and I remember one time their backyard looking for the outhouse she thought she was back in survival Kotter but another time but you were a very brave to you you have a remarkable memory for detail not
goodness this has been so interesting other things I remember when I was waiting for the streetcars they had these kiosks and this guy stretcher had always had anti-semitic propaganda and I remember particularly one that showed a the caricature of a Jewish face and this guy was holding an onion as the Jews like onions now what kind of how terrible is that but to this day I don't feel guilty about that cartoon and I once met a man a bridge player in New Jersey who looked exactly like this caricatures he had the hook so the bridge plugs you already turn it back on or not just
yeah it's back yep okay the bridge clubs really grew here after some what you remember and of course some of the bridge greats with the Aces and everything from here it was a big rage big nourish my mouth and we never see them how he got you should play with some gold for gold Bobby Bobby Goldman he once came in talked to a director that was as much as I saw so join ru ru of silver life master Ruby life master beyond that I'm within less than one point of being a separate bathroom which is how many pointer before 3500 that's remarkable remarkable so you'd
you travel to a lot of bridge conventions to the regionals and sectionals and they are saws and everyone my wife like to travel and so we use that as a good excuse to first nationally on Tuesday Hawaii anyway this is a picture of my parents and these these lower are the parents of aunt Irma who were also my grandparents best friend the parents for thought it was very handsome in your mother very pretty very pretty and felt there that night thank you so much for sharing your story with us today it has been so interesting and we really appreciate the time you've given us and
where does that leave gate leave Kate from Paul that means I lent the pictures which was very common I'm sure in those days to live about the store it's a beautiful building well this is wonderful that you have in the city of noise found a photographer who have taken a lot of pictures of people in Germany oh this is just just past five our store is over here and this is what the streets look like cobblestone would look at the flags drawing flags this is wonderful you catch so many of these things and you haven't organized so oh how cute look at you with all
that hair and this was who we weren't big enough in Boise to have a rabbi for this camp and you were apartments but and noise no no I went here oh that's right we would do anywhere eight that's right that's right picture passport pictures this is some book oh you've had quite a journey you're quite a journey really interesting so glad you shared it you