Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War Interviews-Rosemarie Feigl

So my father had a brother who was working in Italy, in the Austrian consulate. And at that time-- and The Holocaust proceeded very slowly at that time. It was still quite possible to just pack a bag and go somewhere. We didn't realize how quickly it was going to become impossible to flee. But at that point, if you wanted to leave, they said good luck. Go. So that was my father.

Then my mother and I stayed until my grandparents were afraid to send me to school because they were stoning the Jewish. We went to a special Jewish school, and they were stoning the children on the way to school.

So my grandparents thought, well-- also, they felt that I belonged with my parents. So I was shipped off too. Then first, Italy. And when that became an untenable situation, I spent three months in Genoa with my parents. We then-- we had-- my father got a fake visa to Belgium, with a transit visa to France.

And of course, the Belgian visa was not real, so we ended up in France. And we're in France until the war started. I remember Marseilles very well. I even remember my address and must say I have not been back to Marseilles since 1940.

But it was an active sea port. And one of our problems was that not only that my father was not allowed to work, but that we were running out of money. And we couldn't get any food stamps because when the war broke out, we were enemy aliens, not because we were Jewish, but because we had an Austrian passport.

And my father went from consulate to consulate, trying to get visas to go anywhere that was plausible. And we had an affidavit to come to America, but we needed a statement that-- of good character from the German, i.e. Austrian government. And of course, try to get that in the middle of a war. And in those meetings from-- going from consulate to consulate, that's where he met Martha Sharp, who saved my life.

One of the clearer memories is her standing at the-- we must have talked. But I mean she had 36 people in her care. She gave us all beige berets and there are pictures of us. And in those beige berets took to-- she'll be able to account for, I think, what was 27 children. And to hold us up too so that we were recognizable.

And of course-- and some of those children, I think, the youngest one was 4 and was sick on the voyage. I think it was one of the [inaudible] children. I don't-- this is not a recollection. This is after the fact.

So she had her hands full. But I remember her standing-- when we spoke of it, I remember her standing at a railroad station. I don't know whether it's from France to Spain or from Spain to Portugal, where they were giving her a terrible time about crossing the frontier, all these functionaries who suddenly got power.

And she stood her ground. And it must have been a long time. And all we saw was because we watched her. All we saw her arms waving and her smiling and being-- she must have been enormously determined-- it just has been an extraordinary experience.

And of course-- but I think it affected all of our lives, those of us who are refugees and this denying of identity and feeling that there was something-- I think Dr. Strasser mentioned this in his interview that he felt as a child-- something was wrong with him for what had happened. And I said I never felt that way. And I was told by my friends sure, you did.

And then remember that-- I thought a lot of things were my fault, including being neurotic that-- it really didn't cross my mind that the things that happened to me might have affected me in later-- the insecurities that haunted me came from among other things, from the fact that had all this anxiety and running, it must have been very hard on a child, any child anywhere.

And of course, it's-- there were children-- and there are children all over the world that this is still happening too.