Out of the Holocaust: Gerhard Heimann and Lotte Grünfeld Heimann (Part One), 2002

Part one of oral history interview with Gerhard Heimann and Lotte Gruenfeld Heimann.

Gerhard Heimann, born on September 29, 1921 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Berlin, where he helped his family with their upholstery business; the aftermath of Kristallnacht when his family determined that the 17 year old should flee to Holland; arriving in Nijmegen, Holland, where he was turned away by a Nazi boarder guard; returning to his family in Berlin; the family's good fortune of securing visas to Shanghai, thanks to the efforts of his sister-in-law Lotte Grünfeld Heimann, who had petitioned the Japanese embassy in Berlin; leaving Berlin on September 16, 1940 by train on the Siberian route through Lithuania, Russia, and Manchuria, a month before Germany closed all escape routes for Jews; the family's arrival in the Shanghai Ghetto where they were housed in crowded and unsanitary barracks; experiencing daily bombings; finding work in the French Concession of Shanghai, where he was able to supplement his family's meager rice rations; immigrating to Israel in 1948 following relocation efforts by the Joint Distribution Committee; living in Haifa and helping support his family through plumbing work; moving with his parents in 1953 to Denver, Colorado to join his brother Kurt and sister-in-law Lotte; getting married, working hard, and thriving in the Colorado Rockies; and his feeling that his family's survival was a combination of luck and miracles.