Dorothy Anker Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

University of Illinois at Springfield 

Norris L Brookens Library 

Archives/Special Collections 

Dorothy Anker Memoir 

AN61. Anker, Dorothy b. 1913 

Interview and memoir 

4 tapes, 360 min., 96 pp. 

Anker, retired owner of a Springfield photo studio, recalls her life in Germany 

prior to WWII, conditions for Jewish people in the 30's, memories of Crystal 

Night, and the effects of Nazi government policies on her family and their 

business. She also discusses her training in photography prior to the war, 

emigration to England and to America, arrival in Springfield, operation of a photo 

studio, and involvement in the Springfield community. 

Interview by Josephine B. Saner, 1979 

OPEN 

Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 

University of Illinois at Springfield 

One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 

Springfield IL 62703-5407 

© 1979, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

Dorothy Anker Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield

Fref ace 

This manuscript is the product of four tape recorded interviews conducted 

by Josephine B. Saner for the Oral History Office of Sangamon State 

University during the summer of 1979. Dorothy Anker reviewed the 

transcript. 

Arrangements had been made to interview Mrs. Anker's husband, Hans. 

When hc passed away in the spring of that year, it was decided to go 

ahead with the story of the Ankers, who came to this country from Germany 

during the Hitler regime and established in SpringffeZd a successful 

photography studio. Dorothy Anker closed the business a few months after 

her husband's death, and after this interview. 

Dorothy Nadel Anker was born in Koenigsberg, in then East Prussia, 

Germany on June 23, 1913. Her father was a well to do business man 

dealing in legumes which he bought in the eastern countries such as 

Russia, Lithuania, Rumania and Poland, and processed into saleable 

products in western Europe, England and America, 

She attended a private elementary school, then a Lyceum, and rejecting 

her father's wish that she attend a finishing school in France or 

Switzerland, enrolled at sixteen in a special school in Berlin to study 

photography. Her interest in this subject had been fostered by her 

mother. Upon finishing the two year course she served as an apprentice 

in established studios in Berlin and Munich. 

The future looked rosy when she married Hans Anker, graduate of several 

German Universities, who already established himself in merchandising 

in a large chain of retail stores. The picture changed completely with 

the coming to power of Hitler and the creeping but insidiou~ persecution 

of the Jewish people. Their attempts to leave Germany finally culminated 

in their going to England with their small son Peter, and eventually to 

America. 

The Ankers came to Springfield because Dorothy's brother, Eric Nadel, and 

his family had preceded them. Having been unable to bring any funds out 

of Germany, they were dependent on the help and kindness of friends and 

the local Jewish community, until Dorothy's skill in photography led them 

to what became a successful business venture and earned them a respected 

place in Springfield. 

Bel.ieving that they owed a debt to the town which had given them a new 

start, they both became active in community affairs, particularly in 

musical circles, their children's activities and later the welfare of 

senior citizens. 

Readers of the oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a 

transcrlpt of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator and 

editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is 

inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State University is not 

responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views 

-pressed therein; these are for the reader to judge. 

The manuscript- may he read, quoted and cired freely. It may not be 

reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical, 

without permission in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon 

State University, Springfield, IlI,inois, 62708.

Birth and Family Background 

Table of Contents 

The Legumes Firm; Leipzig, Koenfgsbesg 

Childhood Home 

Photography: Interest, School, Trafning 

World War I 

Schooldays 

Job with aso ow: Munich, 1932 

Work for Fotola Studios 

Meeting Hans Anker 

Marriage, 1933 

Hitler and Gocring 

The Pol.ish Corridor 

Hitles's Effect on Jewish Businesses 

Jewlsh Kultur Bund 

Crystal Night 

Arrest of Hans and ~orothy's Father 

Emigration: Germany to England, 1939 

Employment Restrictions, England 

Peter at Ilkley 

England to United States, World War IT 

Illinois Soy Products Company--Eric Nadel 

Hans, Dorothy and Peter Arrive Springfield 

The Photography Business 

Effects of World War I1 on Business 

Photography for Social Events 

Student Cooperative Program 


Studio at Second and 

~ 

Vine 

I 

~ 

Professional Photography Status in Springfield 

Changes in Photography 

Community and Volunteer Work 

~ Classes at Sangaman State IJniversity 


Dorothy Anker, June 26, 1979, Springfield, Illinois. 

Josephine Saner, Interviewer. 

Q This is Josephiac Saner for Sangamon Stare University iatemiewing 

Mrs. Dorothy Anker, who with her late husband Hans Anker, came to 

Springfield in 1940 and established me of Springfield's more successful 

photographic studios. Mrs. Anker, or Dororhy, if I nay call you that, 

since you came to Springfield and were nut horn here, I would like to go 

into what Z know is a very interesting background in your life, going 

back to Germany to the business that your family had there and to some 

of the interesting ancestors that you told me about. 1 thiak I will 

begin though by asking you where you were born. 

A. I was born in Koenigsberg in Preussen. 

Q, Now is that today part of Germany or not? 

A. No, since the Potsdam Agreement, It became the Russian city of 

Kaliningrad . 

Q. Oh, it has a different name then. 

A, Yes. 

Q. 

And when were you born? 

A. I was born, even the date? 

Q. Yes. Of course. 

A. June 23, 1913. 

Q. And your family had lived there for several generations? 

A. No, my parents had come. My father was born in Leipzig. 

Q. That is East Germany now, I s it not? 

A. Yes, And my mother was born in Halberstadt. 

Q. Is that over In West Germany? 

A. No, it's just on the border of East Germany also. 

. Is it near Leipzig? 

A. It's not too far from Leipzig . Wile Leipzig bel~nged to the 

kingdom of Saxonia during the time my father was born, Halberstadt 

belonged to Prussia. 

Q. I see. h d then how did they happen ro come to Koenigsberg? 


Dorothy Anker 2 

A. My father came as a young man together with his brother-in-law, my 

uncle, and they founded the f i nn which had been establ-ished in Leipzfg. 

And they founded the business in Koenlgsherg. 

Q. You say they founded the firm in Leipzig. Then your brother and 

your uncle crime, I mean your father and your uncle came and founded, 

extended It to Koenigsberg. What sort of a firm was it? 

A. We had legumes, dry legumes, lentils, peas, and beans. 

Q. What did you do with them? 

A. 'IJe bought them in the eastern countries like Tdthuania, Poland, 

Russia, Rumania and we cleaned them and sorted them into more salable 

products. We also peeled them like the, split peas . . , 

. You were ready for some split pea soup. 

A. Yes, like you use them for human consumption, 

. You say you bought them from the eastern countries. Where dld you 

sell them? 

A. We sold them all In the western countries. I mean some In Germany 

themselves, in Prance, England, Holland, Belgium, United States. 

Q. What were some of the firms to whom you sold, do you remember? 

A, In the United States we had French as one of the large customers. 

Big mustard firm. And we had Cross and Blackwell in England. They were 

one of our blgges t customers . 

Q. You did not package these for retail. Yea sold it wholesale. 

A. No, we sold it as hulk. These in bag, some of it, but some of it 

was just shipped in hig tannage containers of the ships. 

9, Did you awn your own ships? 

A. No, we always used other shipping f inns. 

9. Now I don't think I got the name of your firm. 

A. The name was still the name of my great grandfathe r who came to live 

with his daughter and son-in-law from Austria to Leipzi$. And It was M 

standing for Moses Gruenbaum. 

Q. Your grandfather nwer came to Koenigsberg .then. Zt was only your 

father and your . . . 

A. No. He only came visiting my family in Koenigsberg but he nwer 

worked there. 



. Did he continue the business in Leipzig after they started the one 

in Koenigsberg? 

A. Yes. He continued It in Leipzig, But he was not quite $0 well at 

that time any more and the young man was a head of it. He had another 

son In the business then in Leipzig and they continued in that way, Bat 

the larger business developed out of Koenigsberg which later on spread 

ton; we had another part of the business in Hamburg there. 

Q. You also had warehouses there? 

A. Yes. Bur more rented warehouses. We didn't own any. And my uncle 

and my brother later on bought there and we had another branch in Paris, 

Fr ance . 

Q. You say it was a large firm and obviously it was with all these 

branches. Rut physically how large was It in Koenigsberg? Did you have 

several buildings? 

A. We had two large warehouses and we had a pretty large office 

building. And we employed about a hundred to a hundred and thirty 

people. 

. Were some of these women? 

A. Yes, I mean some were women even In the warehouses who did some of 

the hand sorted vegetables and of course secretaries in the office . , . 

Q. You say hand sorting. Did you grade thaw by size or by quality? 

A. Yes, both. 

Q. Before they were shlpped? 

A. Before they were shipped hecause certain firms wanted to have the 

peas all the same size, Like Cross and Blackwell used to can peas and 

make them mom into a vegetable, not only like for soups but into 

vegetables that would be served at the table. 

Q. Well now, were some of these shipped fresh? 1 thought you dried all 

these vegetables in your plant. You didn't? Were some of them shipped 

as fresh vegetables? 

A. No, they were then half cooked and usEd as fresh vegetables. 

Q. I see. But you did dry them before they were shipped out? 

A. Ja, they came to us mostly dry. 

Q, Oh, did they? 

A. But sometimes the better buys, they hod gotten wet and because, T 

mean lying in warehouses and being out in the open on ships and being 

unloaded and reloaded, the things . . . 


Dorothy Anker 

Q. Yes, is there much spoilage in this kind of a business? 

A. Yes, but not as .much as when you have the real fresh vegetables. I 

mean xihen they came to us they are already more or less in the drying 

stages. But of course there is spoilage. There are worms and there are 

certain sicknesses which can come into it. 

). I would think mold if they gor damp. 

A. Mold, ja. 1 mean molding. There i s a certain degree of spoilage 

which is what can happen with any kind of food. 

Q. I presume your warehouses were in the harbor. Is this on the Baltic 

Sea? 

A, No, this was the River Pregel, P-R-E-G-E-L. 

. It must have been R deep water river though if boqts could come in 

and dock. 

A. Yes. And it hardly ever froze. 1 mean that was a big advantage. 

This is why they [the Russians] wanred it you know hecause many of- the 

Haltic seaports would freeze at least part of the winter, And here we 

had to have hardly any icebreakers. That was an exception hen we had 

such cold weather to keep an icebreaker in inter to open the rfvver and 

the Baltic there. 

Q. And this river did go into the Bal"ric? 

A. Yes, It went in. 

(1. Did you send your products, well you menttoned France arrd America. 

Did you send them overseas to a peat extent? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Did you also have trade with the Far East? 

A. No, But with South America we had some tooh For instance, Chile 

was a land that prodwed lentils. 

Q. So you bought from them. 

A. And sometimes we wen bought from Chile. 

. You say you had peas and lentils and certain types of beans, 

A. Yes. And mustard and poppy seeds. 

Q. 

A. No. 

Oh, you handled, hut you dldn't handle spices as such? 


Dorothy Anker "5 

Q. No. I think that we might go back a little and you tell me a 1-ittle 

bit about your mother's family and how she happened to come to 

Koenigsberg. Did she meet your father there in Koenigsberg? 

A. Yes, she did. 

Q. Yes. 

A. My morher, that was maybe kind of a strange coincidence . . . 

Q. What was her maiden name? 

Q. And her first name? 

Q. A-D-E-L-E. All right. 

A. And she came as a little girl of nine to the household of her uncle 

and aunt . . . 

Q. Where had she been born? 

A. She was born, I think we had that mentiand before, Halberstadt. 

(2. Something happened to the tape. Perhaps we did. A11 right. 

Halberstadt , 

A. And her father had six children all together. He was a watchmaker 

and jeweler. 

. And he sent her up to Koenigsberg . 

A. And he sent her to her aunt and the uncle was a mathematic professor 

at the University of Koenigsberg. 

Q. I'm sorry to ask you to repeat this. But the first time we taped it 

I didn't pick up your voice. It's my mistake. 

A. And in that household she had cerraFn advanrages, fn her upbringing 

it was a very cultured house , . . 

Q. And did they have no children of their own7 

A, They had no children of their own and they liked my mother very 

much- They gave her certain advantages. She had a social life of the 

university when she grew up. They traveled quite a hit Whkh my 

grandfather who had a jewelry store couldn'r afford with so many 

children. And she saw more of the then known world, which was probably 

only in Germany, than her brothers and sisters. 



Q. But she was not legally adopted by her uncle? 

A. No, she was not adopted. She kept her own name and she was always 

very close to her own brothers and ~isters. 

Q. She did get to go back and visit them though? 

A, And visited her family very often. There has even been a very close 

relationship that even now 1 have; with mast of these couslns of mine 

1s still R very close contact. 

Q. Are mofit of your cousins in the United Stares now? 

A. No. 

Q. Tlzey are back in . . . 

A. They are spread all over the world, I have cousins in Israel. I 

have cousins in France, in London, one famlly went back to Germany, I 

have cousins in Chile. I have cousins . . , 

Q. Perhaps we can add that lhter. Do you correspond with all thew 

cousins? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Have you seen them often in the last few years? 

A. I have seen some of them. Some I have never seen. But during the 

recent sickness of my husband and later on his death, most of them were 

very nice to me and especially Invited me and called me from overseas 

and invited me to come and visit them. 

Q. Oh, you must do that. But going back to your family. Your 

business, on your father's side, certainly sounds as though it were a 

very profitable one in the years when you were growing up. And I wonder 

if you would tell me where you lived, something about your house. 

A. Ja. We were on the comfortable side. And 1 never qulte reallzed 

how wealthy we were because mostly we don't talk about it since you are 

a child and growing up. But we llved in a very lovely hame in the nicest 

area of the city. 

Q. Was this a separate suburb with a name? 

A. It had a name but . . . 

Q, But no post office. 

A. No, no, The post off ice was Koenigsberg. 

Q, What was the name of your little suburb? 



A. It was called ilmalienau. 

Q. And what was the hmse llke? 

A. The house originally was a one-family house. When my father 

purchased it, he purchased it with my uncle togerhes, increased the size 

a bit and made It into a two-family home. And my uncle and aunt lived 

downstairs and my parents lived upstairs. Arid it was large enough that 

when we got married, Hans and I, we had on the third floor our own 

apartment. 

Q. And your own family and uncle's fami1.y had separate apartments too. 

They didn't share cooking facilities or anything. 

A. No. As a matter of fact there was wen a downstairs apartment for 

the caretaker, for the man that took care of the gasdena and around the 

house. And he took care of the heating. 

(2. Did he have a family who lived in there with him? 

A. He had a family too, ja. 

Q. So really, eventually there were four families living in your house, 

were there not? 

A. Ja, Ja. 

Q 

It must have been very large. 

A. Yes, it was. I mean for the caretaker you didn't have quite so much 

but there were cellars like there was a wine callar, you know. And 

there was all, you know, the long laundry had a special thing. 

Q. Did you have a root cellar where you kepr vegetablas like potatoes? 

A. No, 

Q. You didn't. 

A. We had some storage cellar. And 1 mean there was that one where 

there was a workshop for the man that he could ffx us all our, he was a 

pretty handyman who could fix all our electrical equipment and everything. 

Q. Wouldn't it be lovely if people like that exist4 today? 

A. Ja, that's it. Jle had the house free and he also got a little pay 

for it. 

Q, Did you also have maids living fn . . . 

A. Oh, yes. 


Dorothy Ankes 

Q. . . . or did they come by the day? 

A. No, no. We had two maids most of the time. 

Q. Where did they live? Upstairs before you and Hans moved in? 

A. No, no. No, there were maids' rooms. 

Q. There were maidst rooms in each apartment. 

A. Yes. I mean I told you that each of the apartments had about ten 

rooms. You didn't count the maidst rooms in it. 

Q. $0 they were separate. 

A. They were separate. 

Q. I can see, of course, why people refer to that time as the good old 

days, can' t you? 

A. I don't know. Sometimes when the maids had thelr days off you felt 

more at home; it wasn't always so ideal. 

Q. That is true. 

A. Rut of course it is kind of a different living standard. And you 

didn't pay the maids' salaries like you do now. They cmld live in such 

a nice home and have their days off. 

Q. Have you any idea of what they did earn when you were growlng up? 

A. I only knew what I paid later on my own maid. I think that was 

~omething like forty marks a month. 

Q. Approximately ten dollars in our money at that time, wasnv t it7 

Weren't there about four marks to the dollar? 

A, Ja. Ja. It was. 

Q. But she lived in7 

A, And she dfd live In and she got her, I mean, her clothes washed and 

food, I gave her the uniform to wear on certain days when I had company 

or to look a little special. 

Q That was the standard salary in those days. I think I heard you 

mention that your house also had a tennis court on the grounds. 

A. Yes, we had that. It was one of those old clay courts. My mother 

always insisted that we should roll it out and it sometimes loolced a 

little neglected. Rut we stlll played there agpecially on the weekends 

when our clubs were busy. 



Q. Now tell me about the clubs. What kind of clubs were these? Like 

our country club in America? 

A. No, they were not that fancy. They were just pure tennis clubs. 

You went there for tennis, for competition. You got your lessons there 

and you had certain tournaments, sometimes within the club, sometimes 

with some other clubs together. And I think the only thing you could get 

there was refreshment but not elegant foods. 

Q. Not meals really. Jusr snack$. 

A. Not really meals. Snacks, yes. 

Q. Then you've played tennis all your life? 

A. Yes, I started when I was about ten or eleven years old. 

Q. Do you still play? 

A. Yes, I still play. 

Q. Good. 

A. But we also had one parr which was a ll food garden, just apples, 

pears, and berries, cherries, whatever you had these. 

Q. Then there must have been a lot of home canning. Did you can these 

fruits? 

A. Yes, my mother canned them, some of it. 

Q. Did you have brothers and sisters? 

A. I had a brorher who is two and a half years older than I am. 

Q. And is he in this country? 

A. Ja, he is in this country. As a matter of fact, he came first to 

Springfield. This was the reason why we came to Springfield. 

Q. I do want to hear about your coming but I think maybe it's time to 

go back. Because you mentioned to me that it was your mother who really 

flrst interested you in photography. That she was a photographer. How 

did she happen to get interested in it? 

A. My mother had a camera probably from tho time my brother was horn 

and she kind of recorded his growth and later on my growth. And when we 

lived In this home she had a little darkroom. And here when I was about 

fifteen, by that time I had my own camera, and she showed me how to 

develop the film and make prints. After 1 had graduated from the Lyceum 

in Kaenigsberg, my father wanted to send me ta one of these finishing 

schools, either in England or Switzerland to learn more languages, more 

literature, get more art appreciation. But through a friend of mine who 

had entered another school of photography, I thought it would be a 

lovely thing to do to rake up photography. It may be the job which 



makes people happy. You can see pictures of their families and 1 nwer 

belleved in my possibility of doing any painting. But for ,thar 1 

figu,red I may have enough ta1,ents. 1 could see pretry things and could 

reproduce them. And I had. the idea to go to ~chool for rhat. 

in Berlin a school called the Lette Haus. 

There was 

Q. You want to spell that for me. 

A. L-E-T-T-E. And IIaus. 

Q. H-A-U-S. 

A. Which was for all sorts of women vocations. You could learn ,many 

things which you here now have to go to college for like becoming an 

interior decorator, and you become a fashlon designer, you could wen 

learn hair dressing or become a nurse or he a schooltaaches* But these 

was in this a school of photography. 

Q, Did you say thls was just for women? This school? 

A. No, there were 3 few men but they were singled out. 

Q. Mostly these were professions for women who were in school there. 

A. Yes. I mean in our school of photography we had quite, a few boys. 

Nor too many; they were in the minority. 

Q, And how old were you when you went to this school? 

A. I was relatively one of the youngest people in my class. 1 think 

there was only one younger than me hecause I entered the school when 1 

was still sixreen while many of my classmate9 had already gone to 

college and wanted to learn this as a profession, And this was a two 

year course. 

. Was your father disappointed that you didn't go on to . . . 

A. No, no. He wag very delighted that I had the idea to learn a 

profession becnusc he thought it nwer does any harm for girls to learn 

something. 

Q. And how right he was, 

A. And in those days he didn't quite foresee it because it was only, I 

mean when I applied, it was only 1929 when I started. It 

-. 

only 1930 

. 

Q. Had your mother gotten professional tratning when she became 

interested in photography or did she just learn by doin$? 

A. No, she just learned by doing. 


I Dorothy Anker 

1 Q. She didnt t have a teacher? 

I A. No, no. 

I Q. Even to learn developing? 

I ' photographer who showed her something like that hut I don't remember any 

of 

A. No, no. She probably may have gone to s, maybe once to a 

it. 

1 

I 9. Did you specialize in any particular type of photography? 

1 

A. Ja, I specialized more in portraiture because in our school we had a 

choice. 1 mean first of all there were different departments. You could 

also learn x-ray photography or metallurgic photography. But ours was 

the plain photography, bur you could have one part which some of the 

fellows took more, architectural photography, or portraiture. 

decided to specialize in portraiture. 

And I 

1 Q. Did you have live models, professional models? 

1 1 

1 

A. No. We used many of these girls from other parts of the 8chool. 

The nice looking girls from rhe fashion designing or from the art 

classes and sometimes our own girls. But we sometimes had to model for 

something for them, you know. So we interchanged things like that. 

Q. You were quite young when you went down to Berlin. Did you live Fn 

the dormitory? 

find your own7 

Was there housing with the school or did you have to 

I A. No, my parents took care of that. They boarded me with a family 

which was a very interesting family. They lived close to the school. 

1 You did not have room and board with any of these Geman schools at 

1 

) 

least not in those days. And that was quite a common way, Some friend 

took students but I was with a family of the only Jewish archivist* And 

I he was a Zfonist. He always wanted me to go to his place. 1 mean in 

those times it was Palestine. He later on housed the archives in to 

1 Jerusalem. 

1 Q. He was an archivist? 

A. Yes. Archivist. 

1 Q. Were these friends of your family or . . . 

i 

1 A. No, but my parents found them through a newspaper, such a, I don't 

i know, maybe some , . . 

1 

I Q. An agency perhaps? 

A. . . . an agency or, no, first there was a Rabbi who wanted to take 

me and he lived too far from the school and he recommended me to go to 

1 that family. 

I 



Q. So you could walk to school, could you? 

A. I could walk to school, yes. 

Q. h d tell me about the school. What long hours did yea put in? 

A. We mostly started at nine and we were through by abodt 3:30, had 

lunch in between. And we did, I mean we learned photography with a 

history of phot~graphy. We mixecl our own chemicals, we learned also all 

sorts of processing, tw had some art Instrucrions, hut we also were 

trained in the more practical side like if you have your own studgo that 

you know a little hit about bookkeeping and it was a very nice all the 

way around training. 

Q. Did you have to have some of your own equlpmedt or did they furnish 

everything? 

A. Yes, they had, I mean, we used at the school their equipment. But 

slowly we boaght ourselves cameras and we also had to finish certain 

things for every end of the semester and we had to produce it and do 

that as homework, And so I had bought me an enlarges and printer and 

Izad it in my home, 1 had to do that in the bathroom of the people where 

I lSved. 

Q. They didn't mind all these chemical odors around their house? 

A. No, but 1 did that mostly after the people were in bed or something. 

But you didn't hwe that many bathrooms. 

f What kind of cameras did you have, your own? 

A. I had different cameras. I mean at different years I advanced. 

Most you had the smaller cameras that were figured in centimeters of 

course because it was a German calcul~tion there. And then you hM 

something like an 8 x 10, it was only 8 x 10 centheters which was as 

much as 2% x 3%. And then I had . . . 

Q Were they Zeiss cameras? 1'm trying to remember the German Zelss 

lenses . 

A. Zeiss lenses we h 4 hut I mean to begin with I think I had a Agfa 

camera. And then later on I got a small Reflex camera whlch was one of 

the highest of the style and then later on had a lot a£ flaws and didnv t 

work very well, And then I changed to other cameras. 

Q I know that you are interested in art. Were you also by any chance 

studying art while you were taking this phot~graphic course? 

A. We had some drawing fnstructions that weet with it. Mostly in black 

and white llke . , . 

Q. Charcoal. 



A. Charcoal, ja. 

Q. Or pea and tnk drawings. 

A. Ja. Actually we had a teacher who was very encouraging and he told 

me that I could draw ~~hich I had thought at school I never could because 

I felt very untalented in the competitive drawing and painting lessons 

at school before. 

(2, Did you also have to have a knowledge of anatomy? 

A, Oh, yes. 

Q. T would think that would be imporrant. 

A. Because for the retouching we were very much trained that we should 

know the basic bone structure of the face, We had to learn how 

different the cheeks are drawn out, like eyebrows had a sort of a line 

and the noscs had a certain lFne and there are certain rules about it: 

because 1 mean first of course you start out wlth a simple spotting in 

the negative. Of course we learned to retouch human faces i n that 

course. That never was one of my strongest points. 

Q. It sounds like a very thorough school. *at kind of schooling had 

you had before you went to Berlin? You say you had graduated from what 

we in English call the Lyceum. But before that when did you start 

school, at what age? 

A. I started school before I was quite six years old. And this 

happened to be not in Koenigsberg but that happened to be in the Black 

Forest in St. Blasien. 

How did you happen to be there? 

A. That goes qulte way back. Then I was born and only one year old 

when the First World War broke out and we in Koenigsberg, we were afraid 

of the Russians, that they would overrun Koenigsberg. And every day my 

grandparents liked to take the whole family to Leipzfg. And my father, 

then I was about not quite three years old, he got T,B. and was very 

sick and had to go into a sanitarium in this St, Blasien. And after a 

short while, then he got better. And an aunt of mine brought the two of 

us, my brother and me, and brought us over to St. Blaaien where in the 

meanwhile my mother hail rented an apartment. And in thfs apartment we 

lived for two and a half years until my father was well enough to be 

with us after, I think, after a half a year he could be released from 

the sanitarium and only had to go hack ever ao often for checkups. But 

he still was in the good fresh air of the surrounding . . , 

(1. Just to digress a minute. What happened to the huslness during the 

war after your father had had to leave? 

A. I mean the business was in Koenigsberg completely down. And ~ny 

father in Leipzig had probably only traded like an agent in this line of 

business. 


Dorothy hker 14 

And he had to pick up the strlngs agaln and then I think they had rented 

out the warehouse in those days for military supplies. I don't really 

know what it was but it was rented out to some other firm. It was not 

used by US. 

Q. So you were a little girl in St6 Blaslen and started to school 

there, right? 

A, Yes. 

Q. At the age of six, did you tell me? 

A, No. 1 wasn't even quite SIX which was kind a sensation then bec~uge 

all the other farm girls were for sure six or older when they starred to 

school. Bat my parents thought I had stayed home long enough and was 

old enough to go to school. 

Q. Bad they taught you 'to rend in the mean t ime? 

A. I don't recall that any more. But at leaet the one thing that they 

started there tha-t I did take, was the German script and then 1: came 

back to Koenigsberg and started it all mar again. But it didn't do me 

any harm to have started twice. There I went to a private school which 

had in the first few years boys and girls together and after the so- 

called Vorschule, the f irst . . . 

Q. Elementary school, L think probably they were called. 

A. It went really nine years hut then when you started to go into, the 

boys mostly went to gymnasiums and the girh . . . 

Q. And the glrls ro the Lyceum. 

A. . . went to the Lyceum. And this school wenr on for me for all 

together nine years. This private school. 

(1, Was thfs near your home? 

A. Yes. 

Q. So you could walk to school? 

A. So I could walk to school. And later on *en I had a bicycle I 

bicycled to school. 

(2. And you had longer school terms I think than children today in 

America do, didn't you? 

A. No. It wasn't. We had, of courgc, we had six days of school. 

Saturday was also a school day. But we went from eight to around 12:30 

and when we were a little older from eight to 1:30, But we had some 

cL~sses in the afternoon, like gym was in the afternoon and also some 

religious instruction in the afternoon. 



Q. Now was the religious in the school or was that separate? Did you 

go to your temple or . . . 

A. No, it was different. I mean some in the afternoon we had the 

classes, we had the religious schoolteacher and we had bays and girls 

from different schools together. Then there came a time that we had the 

same time when we had religious instruction. The Protestant children, 

was everything Protestant. While we had the classes they rook us Jewish 

children, WE had to go to another school and we got together. with some 

boyg and girls from other schools together. And in all there would be a 

large enough class. The same happened to the Catholic children. 

Q. And did you have this religious instruction every afternoon? 

A. No, no, Not often. We had it only two, three times a week, I 

think. The third time was already voluntary just during the time that I 

felr very religious. And wanted to take some extra. 

Q. So you had come right out of the Lyceum when you decided to go to 

Berlin? 

A. No, I had still, out of this school I had to go into a full-fledged 

Lyceum. This Rimer school was not full-fledged. It was only nine years 

and I went into another school. There I ftnished and got a seal and 

Lyceum's Reife . 

Q. Your certificate. 

A. Yes. I mean with this I would not have been equipped to go into a 

university hut this school, this Lette Haus, that was all they asked 

for. However, there were some girls there who already had gone to 

college or university. 

Q. Did you study foreign languages in your Lyceum? 

A. Yes, you started this always after the fourth yeas of grade school. 

You started out with French and the fifth year you have English added to 

it too. 

Q. So when you came over here, you already had a good foundation of 

English, did you not? 

A* Somehow but then 1 had more out of later Qn private lessons, the 

fact that we lived in England for a year and a half. There I practiced 

English more than theory that you get our of books. And the general 

conversation. 

Q. Now you have now spent two years at the school in Berlin and you 

have received some sort of csrtlficate . . . 

A. We had to pass the board . . . 

END OF SIDE ONE 



Q. You've now spent two years at the school in Berlin. And 1 presume 

when you graduated or when you finished you got some sort ~f 

certificate. 

A. Yes, we had an examination before a Roard of Master Photographers 

and to show them that we could photograph and could process a picture 

pretty decently during rhat time. And when we got perfect, we got a 

grade that we had now passed the Gesellen Pruefung. 

Q. How long did all this take? Did you appear before them for a day? 

A. For a day, ja. A day they came but of course we got also, what do 

you call that, what the kids get . . . 

Q. Diploma? 

A. Ja, this was my diploma that I got from there, But we algo got 

graded on by our teachers. 

Q. Oh, a report card. 

A. A repart card, ja. A report card by our own teachers who cqme here 

and asked the rest of the class. They put us in an A-B or C grade 

whatever they thought was fair for the work we delivered through the 

semesters. 

Q. Were these Master Photographere professional photographers ia your 

land? 

A. There were professional photographers, ja. It was like, 1 mean like 

a union in a way and they were the masters of the Gesellen. You do not 

have this. 

Q. 

No, we don't have rhat. 

A. ~on't you have a master plumber or a master . . . 

Q. 1 think perhaps they do in the unions. They're different grades. 

You start out as an apprentice probably. Now did some of these 

professional photographers pFck up some of the bright students and 

employ them? 

A. Yes, probably. 

Q. Perhaps as apprentices in their studios? 

A. Yes, some did if they wanted to work In Berlin because this was the 

way we were considered in Germany more, I mean not like artists bur like 

handwork . 

Q. Artisans. Craftsmen. 



A. Craftsmen. Ja, we are more lfke a group of craftsmen considered. 

. Well, we're getting too generalized. I want to know whac happened 

next to Dorothy. After she got her certificate. 

A. I applied for a job which I got with the very famous photographer in 

Munich. 

Q. What was his name? 

A. Vasow. I forgot his flrst name. 

Q. Would you like to spell that? 

A. V-A-S-0-, do, I think it was V-A-S-0-W. Vasow. HE was a very know 

man. He took a lot of pictures of people who were quite prominent In 

German public life. 

Q. Did you apply because, particularly because you wanted to work w ith 

him o r because you wanted to be in %nich? 

A. Both. I wanted to be in Munich. 1 always had planned my life that 

1 wanted to live in certaln cities. One of them was bhnich. 

Q. Did you know Munich we117 

A. No, I hadn't seen ILt but just on the trip my mother had gi-ven me 

after my graduation and that was the first time that 1 saw Iatnich. But 

Ir was always kind of my dream to live rhere. And 1 had planned to see 

some other cities hut it came different. My life developed different 

from that, 

Q. But you gor the job in Munich with 7%. Vasow. 

A. I got the job In Munich. 

Q. Where did you live in Munich? Again you had to find a place to 

live. 

A. Ja, rhere I looked now for myself for some quarters and this was In 

Schwabing, what this part of Munich was called because this is where 

that was, (tape turned off) 

Q. Well, I had asked you where you lived. 'L also agkad you where Mr. 

Vasow's studio Mas. 

A. Now that was on the Txdwigstrasse. 

Q. Wich is right downtown in knich, is it not? 

A. No, this was further out. And it vas in this artist's part. And I 

did ssty somewhere very close to where Hell3 Bolman lived. 



Q. Oh, really. Did you meet her then? 

A. No. 

Q. No. Not anti1 you came to Springfield I'm sure. How Long did you 

stay with Mr. Va~ow? 

A, I only stayed with h h for about five months, 

(1. Did he have a large studio? 

A. No, he had a small studio in his apartment aad employed quite a few 

girls like me who worked on a voluntary basis. 

Q, Oh, you were not paid for this? 

A. I was not paid, no. This was what the school recommended us to work 

for a year voluntary. Because it would enhance us and gwe us the 

training on more professional grounds. 

Q. And give yod con£ idence probably in yoas own . , . 

A. Give us confidence in dafng thFs. And besfdes the year 1932 this 

still was not the most prosperous for Germany. And photography was not 

the most prosperow field, nwcr has been maybe. 

. Well, this is the end of the inflation and the beginning of the 

Great Depression. 

A. Ja, now the Depression wasn't really that bad there but times were 

not ton good. 

Q. So really your family was supporting you? 

A, Yes, my family was supporting me. And my parents had even given me 

a trip to Italy which I then started the thole month of October. And 

when I came back I started in a different job, f started with the firm 

of Fotola who had a photographic store and a girl managed, from my own 

school, a graduate of my own school managed the portrait studio for this 

store. And they needed some help, But it was also voluntary. h d 1 

thought it would be a nice experience for me t o get this other kind of 

photography. And as it came closer to Christmas, we were rather busy 

there , 

Q. What do you mean by this other kind of photography? 

A. I mean this Mr. Vasow who was the big master, he let US do mainly 

the work in the darkroom, the retouching, finishing up his pictures. 

13ut he dfd not let 1.19 handle any portrait work by our~alves. While in 

this other establishment, they let me do some pictures and gave me a lot 

more responsible work to do which I enjoyed much better. 



Q. It was much more challenging than just working in the darkroom. 

A. Ja, much more challenging than just being in the darkroom. 

Q. Did you also do developing there too? 

A. oh, yes. 

Q. You did the whale process? 

A. Ja, he let us du that. 

0.. I meant to ask you when we were back in the school if you also 

learned to do framing. 

A. We put things in the frame, but we cut our own mats. 

Q. You did. 

A. And our own cutouts because you did not buy in those days ready 

folders, We learned how to mount things, the dry mounts. That we all 

learnd because this was the way you finished your photographs. 

. You really made your own folders. 

A. We made our own folders and we made our own, I: mean our own mats, 

We did not have the ready made things which you buy now here from , . . 

Q. h supply house. 

A. . . . from supply houses. They did not exist in those days. You 

made that out of cardboard yourself. 

Q. So you were happily engaged fn Munlch. This was 1932, right? When 

you came back from your trip to Italy and went to work for rhe ~otola? 

A. I went to work for the Fotola people. And then I went home 5or 

Christmas .vacation. And in those Christmm vacations I met Hans Anker. 

Q Where did you meet hlm? In Koenigsberg? 

A. Yes, he came to my parenrs' house with his brother-in-law ~tnd he 

was, and we fell in love very soon and got, that was . . . 

Q. You had not even known abont him before? 

A. I had heard about him. As a matter of fact while I was in Berlln 

and 1 lived There, his mother and my mother had talked about that both 

their children, we are in Rerlln and we actually lived very close to 

each other. But he, of course, would not call a girl from home. 

Q Not because his mother asked him to. Of coarse. That 1s 80 typical 

of youth, isn't it? 



A. And I had enough dates that I was not very anxious to see a friend 

of my mother's. 

Q. Yo0 did not need a friend of your mother's. 

A. So we never had met but I had heard about him. 

Q. Now what was he doing at the time you met him? Had he finished the 

university? 

A. He was f iniahed . He had finished at the unfverslty and had worked 

already in his chosen profession; that was with, he was related to one 

of the bosses of the Hermann Tietz which 1s a large, the largest, 

Warenhaus. It's a department store. 

. Department store. 

A. Department store chain in Germany, But during the time 1 met him he 

had interrupted l~ls career to help his father who was sick and had a 

hard way of continuing the busine$s. And he had gone back to IIeilsherg, 

the city where he was born and wlnere his father had the businege. 

Q. What kind of a business was that? 

A, That was, they had grain mill. 

Q. Where was Heilsberg? What part of . . I 

A. It was East Prussia. It was a city about maybe sixty miles from us, 

not quite, There's not such good communication and took you, practically 

all day to get from Heilsberg to Koenigsberg. 

, Well, had Hans already started in the department store before he 

went back ta help his father in the grain mill? 

A, Ja, ja. He had already and had already advanc~d in the profession. 

But his father needed him. He had lost his brother before and needed 

Hans, needed somebody to help h h in the business, 

Q, 1 know it was customary in Germany to go to several universitLes, 

not just one. German students move around more than we do in America, I 

thidk. What universities did Hans at tend? 

A. Hans started at the University of Berlin and then went for a 

summer's semester to Geneva, Switzerland to learn French. And in order 

to perfect the French he even spent a few more ,months at the Sorbonne 

and also worked at the same time for a firm in Paris who entertained men 

who bought goods for the department stores and he showed them around 

France. And he went Interestingly enough t~ gome of these haute couture 

people, dress designer people. And that was all kind of the training to 

what he later on needed in the department store business, 

Q. Now had he studied any business methods, methodology in the 

unlversities or had he simply studied the humanities and languages? 



A. No, he went back then to a German tin-lversity; that was the 

University of Frankfurt. It was the Goethe University in Frankfurt. 

And there he spent the last two years until his graduation from the 

university as a Diplom Kaufmann which is something similar to a R.A. 

Hecnusa you don't have really a degree. I mean . , . 

Q. 

The German university doesn't have a bachelor's degree as we do. 

A. No, no. 

Q. And I don't think it has a master's. You work for your doctorate. 

A. Ja. Now rhis W R ~ not the doctorate. The doctorate he would have ro 

make later. He made only the Diplorn Kaufmann which would be maybe more 

like a bachelor degree hut in commerce. 

Q. And this was hls field in commerce. 

A. In the business field, ja. 

Q. 1 see. How old was Hans when you met him? 

A. He must have been twenty-five. 

Q. And you were? 

A. And I was nineteen, 

(2. Nineteen. You were very young. Then Vera you married soon after 

you met? 

A. No, but we thought already, because I went back co Munich. 

Q. You went back ro your job? 

A. Ja, ro my job and Bans and I promised, among ourselves, we got 

engaged already on New year's Eve from 1932 to 1933. And we got married 

the following year. 

Q. You were married in 1933. Now when you went back home you said for 

Christmas vacation, was thar still the home that you described me where 

you h&l . . . 

A. Ja, ja. 

Q. So really you lived all your young life in that house, didn't you 

except for the short time down in the Black Forest? 



A. No, my parents bought that llome quite a bit after the warb 

Q. Oh, I see. A£ ter you came back. 

A. We lived in an apartment hefore. I mean when we came back, it was 

very hard when we came hack from St. Blasten* It was very hard to find 

an apartment. We even had to live with my uncle together for a llttle 

whlle because it was impossible until we could find another apartment. 

And then we bought a home when I was, oh, maybe about fourteen or so. 

(1. And of course they had to rebuild their business after World War I, 

did they not? 

A. Ja, ja. 

Q. So you and Hans were married in 1933. Where were you married? 

A. I mean first of all in Germany you have ro be married before the 

German authorities. It is the 30 called Standesamt. 

Q That's a civil service. 

A. That's a civil servlce and only this was the right way you got your 

marrfage, your valid marriage certificate. And the wedding was 

performed in our home by a rabbi two days later than the other . . . 

Q Than your civil service. 

A. , . . than our civil service. And it was a relatively small wedding 

because we had only family and very close friends there. 

Q. And both parents were there, 1 mean your parents and his parents? 

A. Unfortunately his father couldn't come because he was too sick. Rut 

hls mother was there. But our home was large enough to have a very nice 

ceremony, And we had still about fifty or so people. \de had a stt down 

dinner. And actually it was a double wedding because my brother got 

marrled at rhe same time. 

Q. How interesting. 

A. And we went wen on a double honeymoon. (laughter) 

Q. Did your brother marry someone you knew? 

A. By then I knew her. And she was from Iiamburg. She was a girl from 

Hamburg 

Q. And your brother had gone into your family's business, had he not? 

A. Yes, yes. 



Q, So where did you go on your weddlng trip, the four a£ you? 

A. We went to St. Moritz, Switzerland, 

Q. Oh, lovely. And what time of year was this? 

A, That was in winter. And we went skiing. 

Q. So you were married the winter of 1933. 

A, Ja. December. 

Q. Were you all good skiers? 

A. My brother, Hans and I, we wwe, my brother was the best skier. Eut 

his wife hardly could ski. While we still went skiing on later 

vacations Hans and I, my brother gave it really up. 

Q. Well you had not stayed in Munich very long, had you? You $aid you 

wenr back there after Christmas. 

A. Ja. 

Q. 

But now you couldn't have been there very long. 

A. Na, I wasn't very long but I learned something which was vary 

interesting. Later on we took pictures. There came the Faschiag tfme in 

Munich and I learned how to take pictures at dances which we introduced 

later on as something absolutely new at that time here in Springfield, 

Illinols . 

Q, Oh, you mean you took pictures of individuals a t dances and balls? 

A. Ja, ja. 

Q . And dances like that. 

A. Like snapshot pictures. And that had nwer been known here in 

Springfield and when we came here after that many years, we introduced 

that at the Art Association at their Beaux Arts Ball and it was kind of 

a sensation in those days. 

Q. Oh, f remember when you used to ser up your cameras out in the foyer 

of the old Leland Hotel and everyone would come, We have one of your 

pictures of our young son and his date. Fasching is usually in February? 

Q. Then you were married after that? 

A. No, we were married later. I was back then. But by that time Hans 

went, my father recommended him to continue his career and quit the idea 

of Hellsberg because there was not much future to be seen In that 

business to go on. And he wanted, we as a young people should build up 


I Dorothy Anker 2 4 

1 

our own lives. And he recommended him to go back to Tietz, to Bermsnn 

I Tietz. And he was first in Berlin. And 1 waa not too happy any mote to 

1 live in Munich . . . 

1 

i Q. Then Hans was in Berlin. 

Q. I see. You were separated for a while. 

A. And I jolned h h in Berlin. But very soon he got advanced md got a 

job in Dresden, And started a job in Dresden. But before this time 

Hitler had come to power. And he should haw starred the job in Dresden 

on the fatal flrst of April, 1934, where Goaring had made before the 

announcement that there should be a boycott for all the Jewish open 

stores and of course . . . 

1 Q. Itwas thatearly. Ididn'trealize thatboycotrwasannouncedso 

; early, 

1 

I A. Ja. And they smashed in all the windows . . . 

I Q, This was in Dresden? 

I 

! A. No, all over . . . 

9. All over Germany. Rut I mean including Dresden. 

A. At that time Hans did not know if he had that job or didn't have the 

job. Rut anyway he went to Dresden and started it. And they also 

quieted down and they could still operate thetr business. Rut many of 

the Jewish busfnasses, open stores at that time got the warntng sign of 

Hitler that they would not have any protection and tried to sell It ta 

Gentile people. 

( Q. Now had you gone to Dresden with Ham? 

A, No, no, I was fn Berlin. I found another job with another 

photographer *ich was also very interesting, because this man Wacs a 

specialist in dancing pictures and artist pictures. I.le bad a lot of 

artists from the stage and cinema and so on. It was kind ~f an 

interesting place. And I learned something more about cameras, And as 

a matter of fact 1 then bought the same kind of equipment like this man 

used and I learned to work for him. But then came this Sitler, My 

farher decided, that while . . . the Hermann Tierz Company sold to a 

Gentile firm. And of course, Hans' chances for advancement were 

practically nil and my father thought that he could learn much more if 

he would join him and would learn our business in Koenigsberg, By that 

time I had already moved back from Berlin to Koenigsberg . 

I Q. Your father dfdn't feel that his business would be threatened by any 

I 

I action on the part of the new German government? 


Dorothy Anker 2 5 

A. No, our business was some 1mw more internatianal. We brought in the 

foreign exchange . . . 

Q. Which Hitlxr needed badly. 

A. . . . which Hitler needed badly. And we also were in the nutrition 

bushes9 in that kind of nourishment which wa8 very important for 

military purposes. 

Q. Oh, of course, this is the kind of food that the country can use 

because it does got spot1 like fresh food, 

A. We were kind o'f an exception among the Jewish people. It was even 

srrange that in the year 1934 or 1935, I think my farher had the largest 

rurnaves in buslness he had ever had before. 

Q. Did he 

A. Yes. 

Q. He did . He actually sold to the German government. 

A. He had 

have government contracts? 

government contracts and it was, and he had so much money 

outside. He probably should have seen the warning because he . . . 

Q. You did not leave your money outside? 

A. We could have left wfth a lot more money outside of the country and 

leave our other possessions but we felt too much German, as Geman 

nationals and good German Burghers, citizens, that we never would have 

done anything of that kind. Rut many people did. I mean they had their 

fortdnes outside which we brought into. And we could have told the 

people to leave that property and to just tha whole family pick up and 

leave, there would have been nothing. But it was not my parenrs ideal. 

Q. They were patriots, they were good patriots and good Germans. 

A. And they thought that nothing could happen to us. 

(1. There was no fear on their part that thetr money would be 

confiscated and all their possessions? 

A. No, not in those days. 

Q. In those days. Tkat early. 

A. This came at a later date, when rhey put us in the government 

official commissioner and hc took over our business. By that time the 

business was, it was about 1936 or 1937. I don't know exactly. And 

there of course we knew what the writing was and we wanted a11 to leave, 

especially the younger people. 

Q. Was this commissioner who took over your business, was he a member 

of the S.S. or S.A. 


Dorothy Ankes 26 

A. Oh, sure. Ja. Probably a party member because he was an older man 

who had been a small agent before and he came there and sat down. 

Q. Someone you knew? Your father knew? 

A. Oh, sure. Ja, ja. Not so very successful businessman and he 

thought now he sits there and he rakes the whole business over. But by 

that time the business was very much diminished already because certain 

things didn't work quite so well any more, And my parents also were 

Iimited then later on with their own expenses. I mean, they were not 

allowed to use their own personal money to live. 

Q. Oh, then what did they live on? 

A. They only were all.owed, they had to make certain rules of what they 

needed for the year of livlng on, on their own personal money. 

Q. They, fn other words, they had to present a bddget to the 

authorities and say we need sa much. 

A. Ja. 

Q. 73113 year and the authoritfee . . . Then, was the rest of the 

company money Just confiscated at that point? 

A. Ja. 

Q, The government took it? 

A. Ja. 

Q. Took the profits over and above a limited amount for your family to 

live on. 

A. Ja, ja. And meanwhile my unc1.e'~ and his chlldren had already gone 

to then Palestine and we had been, we had traveled in foreign countries 

and we were looking for possibilities where we could $0- 

Q. You mean you and Hans? 

A. Hans and me, we had already trfed. And we saw possibilities to go 

to Rotterdam but we could not get, or to Antwerp efther Rotterdam or 

Antwerp. But we could not ger a visa that either one of these countriee 

could take us. And we also could not get into France. There's all the 

possibilities we had tried. We had met once on vacation a vefy high 

official and even he could never help us to Get a pewit to get into 

France. 

Q. Now could you at that time have gotten a permit to leave Germany? 

A, Germany we could have left. 

Q. They would not have stopped you if you had a visa from anather 

country? 


Dorothy hker 

A. But we could have left Germany. 

Q. 

You simply couldn't have taken any money out. 

A. But none of the other countries would heave taken us, And so then we 

tried our luck with the United States and there is of course Hans' 

beautiful story of how we got out and haw we went and maybe this explains 

much better our immigration. [Hans wrote this story for Professor 

Christopher BreXseth'~ history course at Sangamon Sratc University.] 

9. It may but a little later. Perhaps another day. I would like to 

hear you tell the story. Because Hans' can't really be incorporated 

into this tape very well. Sa I'm interested in it but I'm sure you can 

tell it too. And we can pick up on some of the things you've wtd. Rut 

we are now at, well what year was it when the governmeat really took 

over your family's business and put, as you say, a cmmiseioner in there 

ro run it? Was this 19341 

A. No, no, It was either the end of 1936 Qr 1937. 

Q. 

But Hans then was in your father's businegg about 1934 on, or 1933. 

A. No, he was even in 1933. He had already joined before we gat 

married, he was already in my father's business. 

Q. 1 thought after you were married he was with Tietz still. 

A. No, no. That was before. I mean when we were engaged. He came and 

joined my father's business about, in summer, maybe in July or Avgust of 

1933. 

Q. Yes. So then there were about three years that Bans was in the 

business . 

A, No, I mean until he left, you know. There was still a litrle bir to 

do and all this absolving of the business, you know. That was because a 

large business 1s not so easy just finished. And then in . . . 

Q, But you said the business had been running down in the middle 

thirties before, it was good in the beginning af the Hitler reg$me. And 

then it began to sun down. Now what was the taal reason far that? Were 

the other countries not buying from Germany or wese tho restrictions put 

on you by the Germans so bad? Or couldn't you get the raw materials or 

get the legumes? 

A. I think we couldn' t get enough raw materials because they didn' t 

want to do so much business with Germany. 

Q. Was it because you wese Jewish or the other countries didn't want to 

do business with Gennany perhaps? 

A. Ja, I think that was more the reason. 


Dorothy Mker 

Q. So that's why the business began to run down. 

A. Ja. Ja. 

Q. And then I'm sure after your Nazi cammissioner took over it just 

went to pieces. But was your father then, d$d he pull completely out of 

the business after the German government took it over? Did he get any . 

. . 

A. Ja. Hegot. . . 

Q. Did he get any compensation? 

A. Oh, no. No, 

Q. No, nothing. He was out. 

A. He got work then later on wlth one secretary but she mostly did some 

of his more or less private business than the business part, She just 

helped him wlth some of the correspondence. And you know then cme 

1938, the Crystal Night. Then they interned my father and Hans in 

prison. 

Q. No, I didn't, 1 dldn't know Hans was imprisoned. 

A. Oh, ja. You see we did not have a concentration camp in Koenigsberg 

and they dfd not want to send these Jewish men through rhe P~lish Corridor 

in those days because that was before the war. It was in 1938. 

That was only after, I mean Austria had been annexed . . . 

Q. In March of 1938 as I remember. 

A. Ja. And Czechoslovakia . . . 

Q. Later. 

A. . . l a . And Poland was still their ow country. And then in 

order for us to get into Berlin we had to go through the Polish Corridor 

all the time, 

Q. Tell me about your problems in crossing the Pollsh Corridor. I 

heard yous husband tell that in a class hut I'd like to get it down on 

tape because the Polish Corridor was created, as I remember, at the end 

of World War I. and it went right down the middle of Germany, dividing 

West Germany frm East Prussia. 

A. Ja. 

Q. Right. And then for you to go to Berlin, as you say, ysu had to 

cross the Corridor and there was some difficulty abaut crossing it, 

wasn't these, after the Nazis came to power? 

A, It wasn't really a difficulty in a way. I mean mostly becawe by 

train and the moment you were through Germany then there came the Polish 

officer and he a.sked for your tickets and you had to have a passport. 



Q. You hed to have a passport just to go across the Corridor. 

A. I think we had to have a passport, ja. And then you were on he 

other side and came again the German officiai and we showed him the 

ticket. While we mostly did travel by night because it was just a very 

comfortable trip, we had these sleepers, and went to Berlin and was just 

about an eight hour trip, We went to bed and woke up in Berlin. 

Q. Actoally how much time did it rake the train to cross the Corridor 

itself? How wide was the Corridor? Two hours? 

A. Maybe t.wo, two and a half hours or maybe a little longer. It was 

more diff lcult but once we made that t rip by car. 

Q. Idell there is something that Hans said about the car. 

A. Ja. We had t~ have this special, what they called a Triptik which 

was a permit for the car and you had to put your car on the trafn and 

then . . . 

Q, At the border . , . 

A. At the border. 

Q. Or when you started in Kocnigsberg? 

A. No, no. In Koenigsberg we could travel to Marienburg and then we 

put it on the train and we had ro wait until the train was there who had 

possibiliries to take. a car into their, who had space for a car in their 

train. And then you got your car at the end, an the other end. And 

picked it up, 

Q. Then you had to, did you stay in your car on the train or did you 

have to get in . . . 

A. No, you stayed and we had our tickets for that car and we traveled 

in the train. 

(2. Now was that always true from the the the Corridor was made or wtrs 

that later? If you tried to drive? 

A. I don't know. I think it was probably all that way. We only had 

once in our lives the experience, that was the anly time we drove. And 

because that was quite a large trip for a German car* And our cars were 

smaller and we didn't have these excellent roads whlch they bullt later 

on. They had pretty pour roods. 

p. And you didn't have frequent gas stations, did you? Filllng stations? 

A. No, they didn't hav~. I mean you had to assume that you had enough 

gas in for such a trip. I mean it was quite an enterprise to do rhis. 

Q. I suppose your reason the car had to be put on a train was so you 

wouldn't just take off and stay in Poland or go into other parts of 

Poland. 



A. Probably that was it. Ja. Because we did not have to have a special 

permit [visa] but only for the car we had to have a permit. The car had 

to have a ticket to ride over and we got the car taken off. So this was 

quite a lengthy way. I mean you had to be at the border statlons with 

your car at the time when they had the train whlch would go and you had 

to pick up your car. So you lost quite a bit of rime. And it took you 

a lot longer than it would if you would have decent roads that would 

drive all the way to Poland. 

Q. Now did there come a tlmc later before you left when you weren't 

allowed to cross the Polish Corrfdor at all? Or do y ~ u remember? 

A. IJe had to have special permission. I mean for instance also to go 

into Daazig which was the free city of Danzig. And if we went into 

Danzig we had to go through a 1-Lttle bit of that part of that Polish 

Corridor. Not the whole bits of it. Bur we always had pemissi~n. We 

could get In there because I still remembar $hat in the year 1937 I got 

a permit to get into Znppot after we had already made the vacation trip, 

Hans and 1, and X used that and then later on to go with my little boy 

Peter, went to Zoppot. Because we had relatives these and it vas always 

very nice and the boy hadn't heen away un a vacatipn. Hans and I had 

made that trip all through Europe to find possib-ll ities where we could 

go if we really wanted to leave Germany. 

. Were you, did you have all these regulations about crosslrlg the 

corridor, because you were German or because you were Jewish? 

A. Because we were Germans. 

Q. Tt applied ro all Germans. 

A. Ja. It was the same. 

Q. Then before you actually left, were you restricted in traveling 

because you were Jewish? 

A. Yes, because we got an extra name as Jaws. The women, we are all 

called Sarah. When I left Germany I was Dorothy Sarah Anker. And Hans, 

every man was called Israel. So he was Hans Israel Anker. 

(2. 

Jews. 

So then that was just one other way that you could be identified as 

A. We were right away Idcntifiarl as being Jewish. 

Q. Were your passpo'rts at any time taken away from you? 

A. No, but my passport, my regular passport had expired. And when I 

applied for a new one, this extra naxle was put: into the passport. It 

was not in 1937. Then I still had the regular passport with my own name. 

I think I got that passport for my immigratfon. 

Q. Mter you and Hans had made this trip around Europe looking for a 

possible place to settle, you came hack to Koenigsberg and what did you 

decide to do then? 



A. I mean then we tried to correspond and find possibilities maybe to 

go to United States. And we did not have any close relatives. 

Q. You had to have a sponsor, didn't you? 

A. We had to have a sponsor in Arnerlca. We had put in by chance a 

number at the American consul . . . 

END OF TAPE 

Q. Good morning, Dorothy Anker. A week has $one by since our first 

taping. And we had gotten up to the year 1938 and you had mentioned the 

Crystal Night which was really a black blot on ~ermany's escutcheon. 

Rut I'd like to go back just a little bit and talk about your finances 

and the financial picture of the Jewish population in general in Germany 

leading up to this year. What had happened to your business? You told 

that the businees at first was lucrative after HitLer came Zn because 

you were earning foreign exchange for Germany but after that it went 

down. Now I: presume that by 1938 when I think you also told me you had 

a German comnlissioner who had taken over, there was really no bueiness 

left. Were you getting any income from your business at that point? 

A. At that the we did not get any income any more. Maybe some 

outstanding bills were paid like when you have a business things take a 

long time to evaluate. There are outstanding notes and outstanding 

bills. These things coming in but it was no new creative buslaem any 

more at all. 

Q. Were these outstanding accounts coming in from abroad, or from German 

customers? 

A. Maybe probably from both sources. That's possible, 

Q. Were German customers paying you if they were so called Aryan 

CUE tomers? 

A. Oh, yes. I mean when they owed us, they were honest to pay. Bur I 

mean some were commisuions. We used to have some army supplies and 80 

on. And there it goes through a lot of red tape until you actually 

receive your money in accounts receivable. But everything wag honestly 

paltd to us I think. I was not in the business part and I really do not 

know too much about these things. But I know that no new business was 

created, that all our employees but jdst one secretary had left us. And 

this secretary helped my father with some of the letters which were 

necessary to write. We owned property in town. We had, I mean, people 

had r0 pay us rent for the property. We had rented out our warehouses 

for storage I think. We did not have our own storage any more. 

Q. Now how long were you allowed to keep your property? Was it 

eventually taken away from you? 



A. Now this is what all happened aafrer the Crystal Night. We sold oar 

home, my parents' home before that time because we needed, I guess it 

was also that we needed some cash because my father's parrner could 

transfer some money to the then Palestine. He needed soma cash and they 

had klnd of, they split a little hft what each of them omled. 

Q. 

Who was your father's partner at that time? 

A. It was the same we always had. My uncle. Rut that happened and he 

immigrated in, 1 think, in 1437. At the end of L937. I'm not quite so 

sure. But anyway in 1938 he wasn't there any more. Maybe it was a 

little later. Rut at that time we had sold the house and we all moved 

into the business house where my parents, we created out of the big 

office . . . 

Q. You made an apartment out of the offices. 

A. A very nlce apartment. And we, my hugband and I, we had a small 

apartment which was empty in the building where we lived. And my uncle 

was with somebody only for a few weeks until his immigration papers to 

Palestine with his wife were settled and they left. 

Q. Without an income coming in from the business, what was your 

father's money in? Was some of it in German securities or in bonds or 

was it mostly in seal estate? 

A. It was partly in bonds, partly in securities, partly in real estate. 

Q. But you had none of this money outside of Germany, did you? 

A. No, we did not have any money outside of Germany. 

Q, And you did tell me something about your father having to account 

for the amount 02 money he would nead in any given year and file that 

with some government agency. 

A. Yes, we got In the year of, now was it in the early 1938 or late 

19377 The Nazi reghe had sent us, had given us a comm.lssioner who 

overloolced the expenses and saw to it how we spend our own money and not 

too much, We had to pay him out of our own money. 

Q You had to pay his salary? 

A. We had to pay his salary. 

(2. Have you any idea how much that was? 

A. 1 mean it was a decent livlng for him. 

. It was a decent llving. 

A. Yes. But we had ro take care of that. He was the man who had a 

little idea i n the grain business. I think he was a small agent, never 

too successful. And now he felt he would take this big business wer 

and just because he was a Nazi official. 



Q. Then you could use your own money up to B predetermined amount each 

year. 

A. Yes. Yes. We had to give a detailed account of what we would use. 

Q. Now how were other people making out who perhaps did not have the 

wealth that your family had? 

A. Now they reduced, I mean, they reduced their working abilities, 

whatever they had and lived by it. I had for instance . . . 

Q. But would they be employed by, they wouldn't be employed by the 

government? 

A. No. They lost all their government jobs. I had thought, shall I 

give you the example I told you before? Would that be interesting? 

Q. Yes, very interesting. Yes. Tell me about people you know. 

A. Ja. I had for instance a cousin who was aa electrician, mare like 

an engineer, add had very good chances with one of the bigger electrical 

companies in Hamburg. And lost of course this position with all his 

chances for life time. But he stlll had to make a livin$ for his young 

family, his wife and child. And he worked as a custodian of a Jewish 

school in Hamburg. I mean with his abilities he could da that very 

well. In fall maybe that school had a non-Jaw working and here this 

fellow could do the job. Then there *re chances for young artists. We 

had founded, the Jewish organizations in Germany had founded a, called a 

~ewf sh Kul tvr Bund . 

Q. Will you spell it? 

A. Shall I . . . 

Q. K-U-L-T-U-R, B-U-N-D. 

A. Yes. And in the different cities they performed, different artists. 

Some were reading poetry, some were performing, singing, some dancing, 

anything you liked to see performed. Piano playing. In the bigger 

cities like in Berlin they even had an opera company where some of ow 

friends were employed. And when we would travel ro Berlin, we saw them 

in an opera, A very good friend of mine I s ~ at w the Carmen. 

Q. Were you find Hans involved in this at all? 

A. Ye8, Ha18 and I were in Koenigsberg very much involved in this and 

it brought a lot of stimulation to our lives. We very often housed 

these young artists and our biggest crown was to have the famous 

Alexander Kipniss staying with us just like a wonder from the outside 

world. Because he had come from a trip from Australia and England and 

Russia and made a stop in our Koenigsbcrg and stayed with us. And we 

spent a delightful few days with him. 



Q. Was he with the Metropolitan Opera at that time? 

A. He was employed with the Metropolitan Opera. 

Q. Now how was this Rultur Rund financed? 

A. Each one of the people had to pay a subscription and probably there 

were some sponsors who paid a little more tao. And it was that the 

German-Jewish organizations helped a little bit so that we could afford 

to exist, 

Q. And you were not molested by the Nazi authorities when you put on 

performances? 

A. No. They ler us have the school auditorium, which accidantly was 

Hans old real gymnasium, where we could perform and of course the people 

who came were Jews or people who were under the Nuremberg regime, Jews, 

Jewish agafn who had not practiced any Jewish religion before but they 

had maybe a Jewish grandmother or grandfather and they were considered 

to be Jews under , . . 

Q, Under the Nuremberg laws, 

A. Under the Nurernberg laws. 

Q. If you were one-eighth, was that it or they went back? 

A. 1 think one-fourth you had to be, I mean one Jewish grandfather or 

one Jewish grandmother meant you were Jewish. 

Q. And you were considered Jewish then. 

A. You were considered Jewish. 

Q. So that the authorities allowed you to put on the~e performances and 

they didn't molest you. Now how long did this go on, when did you start 

this? In the middle thirties? 

A. I think it started when the Nuremberg laws came into action about in 

1936 or so it started. And of course by 1938 it was eliminated. It 

didn't go any more. 

Q. Well, at this the there st111 was a good deal of Jewish wealth in 

Germany, wasn't there? 

A. Oh, yes. Yes, 

Q. Wealthy, who could help, as you say, undermite and sponsor some of 

these performances. Were many of the Jews trying to get their money 

out of Germany at this point? 

A. Well, they could not do it any more. I mean the only possibility 

was these applications for Palestine. 



Q. Why only Palestine, do you know? 

A. I don't know. Tllere must have been a rzade agreement or something. 

But I'm not too familar with these kinds of possthilities. When they 

had certain hate literature against the Jews, what was it that the Nazi 

paper. 

Q. Der Stuermer, 

A. Der Stuermer. There they say all Jcws go to Palestine, And not 

everybody felt that that would be the country for them because they all 

had lived in, since tradition, In a Gentile surrounding and we could not 

see us living only among Jews. And we all never qulte believed that 

this kind of new Nazi philosophy would really out-live us all. 

Q, That's right. No, of course you didn't. I meant to ask you earlier 

. . . What was the size of the Jewish population in Koenigsbarg? Pau 

say you had lived in a Gentile area most of your life. 

A. I mean it was a city of 300,000 population. And only during the, 

after the war years, we had really as many as four thousand Jews there. 

Q. You mean a£ ter World War I. 

A. After World War I, But that was because quite a few of the Russian 

people and Poles had come to Koenlgsberg. They did not settle these for 

good in any length of time. I think the whole population could be 

figured as two thousand, two thousand ftve hundred. But at the time of 

the Nazi regime, many of the young people had already left, especially 

our own generation. If they were professtonal people, they had not: seen 

any chances for themselves. Young doctors, young lawyers. We had young 

businessmen, they did not see any chances for themselvas and had left 

the country wherever they saw a chance of immigrating. Some to South 

America, some to North America, some to Australia, some to European 

countries. And they must have heen reduced by the year 1938 to maybe 

just a thousand or fifteen hundred. 1 mean it was not a special account 

kept all the time. 

Q. So you really were a small minority in K~enigsberg. 

A, Ja, many of those people there by that time wore old people because 

they could not leave as easy and could nor see themselves Leaving as 

easy as the younger ones could. I mean the younger ones were always 

more enterprising and they had to start Iivlng somewhere anyhow. So 

they might as well do it in rhe foreign countries. 

(I. Because you were perhaps an older population, Jewish population, do 

you think perhaps you were treated a little better in the early years of 

the Nazi regime than the Jews living in the big cities, Berlin, Hamburg, 

finich? 

A, 'hat is possible because we a11 had very good Gentile friends which 

we had kept since generations. I mean we were friends, children of 

friends of my parents in some cases. They were people we went to school 

with. 



. You felt yourself really more German than Jewish, is that true? 

A. Yes, rmch more. We were always considered Germans of Jewish 

religion. That is how we always had considered us. 

Q. So now we come up to the infamous Crystal Night. Tell me firat 

exactly wha-t: happened on the night, why was it called Crystal Night? 

A. Now Crystal Night was probably called on account of a11 the glass 

broken in the streets of the cities. 

Q. Broken by whom? 

A, Broken by the Nazis. They burned the synagogues, they broke the big 

window displays in thc Jewish stores. 

Q. Did they get to your homes, too, and mash the glass there? 

A. I don't know If they got, I mean our own home wasn't broken. It was 

only later on that, days later I found--every Jewish home has oa the 

doorpost the Mezzuzah which gives you the Hebrew prayer ~f welcome In a 

home. And I noticed that at: my apartment the Mezzuzah was taken down. 

But I lfved on I think, either the third or fourth floor and it was a 

little hard to get up there to break the window. And even my parents' 

apartment which was above the second floor which was hard to get i n 

there. But T mean first floor, ground floor, buildings may have been 

smashed . 

Q. Of course they knew, I presume they had a register of all the Jewish 

husineuses, so they knew exactly where to go. 

A. They knew where Jewish businesses were, Ja. SJe Were regi$t@red, we 

had gorten before these Jewish names. 

Q. Oh, you told me about those. Every girl was Sarah and every boy was 

Israel. Yes. 

A. And that way we were already recognized in our passports, if we had 

any passports, that we were Jews. 

Q, What time of night did this smashing of glass take place? In the 

middle of the night? 

A. In the mfddle of the night, ja. It happened after this cmrageous 

young Polish Jew whose parents were sent to a concentration camp, he 

lived in Paris, France, and he went to the German ambassador and thought 

he could kill the ambassador but he didn't catch the ambassador* I 

think he only talked to an attache there. Aud he had a gun and shot the 

attache. And the attache then took a few days until be died. And when 

this happened the Nazis put this as a season that the Jews art: not 

taking it peacefully and not that they get all caught hut that they ara 

determined to put a pressure on the Nazis. And they used this to tell 

us we were not wanted . 



Q. You were a ll punished for the deeds of one man, 

A. For the deeds of one man. And a£ tcr they did so much de~troying , 

the Jews had to pay this reparations for the damage they had done. And 

all of us, we had tu pay the Juden Abgabe a special tax, And before we 

left Germany, we had to be assurd that we h& paid this particular tax. 

Each one in their own income sphere. 

income rax . , . 

Something according to your own 

Q. Bracket that you were in. 

A* . . . bracket. And you head to pay which was of course in our case . 

. 

A. Not so rmch but it was terrihly much in my father's case because he 

was the rich man 

Q. Well, you and Hans were young people. You hdn't accumulated . . . 

A. We hadn't accumulated too much. 

Q. Nst too much by that the. 8ut your father had to pay his. Could 

it be paid in installments or dld it all have to be patd at once? 

A. It had all to he paid at once before we wer could have left the 

counrry, Rut unfortunately all this came together and he never could 

leave the country. But he still had TO pay the tax. 

Q. You mentioned that at that time, Hans and your father were arrested. 

Now what's the story behind rhat7 Was every Jewish male In Germany 

arrested? 

A. Yes. Practically every Jewish male. Some maybe they couldn't have 

found because maybe they had moved from one house to the next. In a 

larger city that was possible. Bur our clty was not that large that 

they first in the early night came for my father. We happened to have 

tlw car keys at that time for my father. SO my father telephond us 

into our apartment that please we should bring him down the car keys 

because they also took our car. And how do you call it? I mean they 

. . 

Q. They confiscated it? 

A. They confiscated our car. And Hans bratight the car keys down that 

they could confiscate the car. And went hack up TO our apartman$ and 

they took my father along. And then a few hours later they came for 

Hans and ~icked up Hans. 

Q. Do you think if Hans had not come down with the car keys, they might 

have not realized that he was there? 


~orothy Ankes 3 8 

A. I don' t know, I mean they found in the same building, in our 

building lived the rabbi and we saw their lLghts going on because this 

was all in the middle of the night between threa and four or three and 

five o'clock. b d we happened, we could see then over the house that 

the lights in that building went on. They probably would have faun? him 

anyway . 

I Q. Dorothy, did you and Hans have a child by this time? 

I A. Yes, our son Peter was born in 1935. 

1 Q. So he was three years old. 

I A, He was three years old, 

1 Q, NowwherewereHansandyourfathertaken7 Weretheytakentothe 

1 same place? 

A. Yes. All the Jewish men were first at the police department and 

then they were put Into different prisons in tom. And my father who 

was never such a well man, he played himself up that he was really more 

sick and needed Hans as the young son-in-law to help him and they were, 

at least in the first prison, put into the same cell and they could be 

together and could help each other. 

1 Q. Were you al-lowed to visit them? 

A, This came later. Later on they put all these men into one larpr 

prison downtown. And by that time they permitted us women to help. By 

that time my mother had come back. My mother happened to be visitlng my 

brother in Barnburg at that time. And she was not even there and I was 

the one who lived there. Because at the same time my grandmother lived 

in a very beautiful home for old aged people and they also confiscated 

that home. And I had to settle my grandmother in this, with some family 

where she could llve. It didn't work so well in my own home because I 

had a child and also my grandmother used t~ have a kosher kitchen which 

I did not have. And so I found a cousin who was nice enough to take her 

in for the first beginning. 

I Q. You brought her in to Koenigsberg? 

1 A. Ja, Imeanshewas InKoenigsberg. . . 

1 Q. Oh, she was already in Koenigsberg. 

I 

A. . . . and she was still, this was, like I had mentioned before where 

we lived In Amalienau and this home was beautiful set there in the green 

park near a pond. While at that time we lived already in the city 

apartment and it was a little further away. 

I Q. How long were Hans and your father kept in prison? 

1 A. Now Hans could get out after only three weeks, But that waa due to 

I that I myself had faked at the . . . 



Q. Authority, 

A. . . . authorities, the Nazis because I had told them that we could 

leave the country at such and such a time. It was not quite clear that 

we really could because we were still working on it. We did not, have 

the asked for affidavit to get into the United States where we had 

planned and wanted very much to go. Rut we had a promise fsom a distant 

cousin who wanted to help us to get such aa affidavit. And we had first 

cousins who had just settled in London, England. And I had talked TO 

them and they had promised me that they would at least take Hans out and 

keep him for the interim time in England. They could not give the 

promise to d l of us because they were just not settled but that's why 

we had trled to get tickets to the only possibilities where Jews could 

go, one of then was the Isle of Trinidad and the other ane was Shanghai 

which was at that time an international city. 

Q. It was an international city. 

A. Free city. But luckily for us we got the permit for all three of us 

to get into England. 

Q. Was that unusual for the whole family to be given a permit? It just 

depended on your sponsor. 

A. No, it wasn't impossible hut because I mean many families were in 

England but for us it was a very lucky mistake and we didn't have to 

part becaase after this terrible the where he was in prison aad I 

stayed with my child at home and we did not know anythiug about the 

future, we had promised each other that we would never want to part 

again. And when this came, of course, it was for us the moqt pleasant 

idea ro get into England which we knew from before and we could never 

figure it was so bad, while the other areas were completely unknown. 

Q. That's right. And you had people in England, your cousins. 

A. We had people, we had cousins in England. We had besides some other 

friends in England. And Hans had some family in England, so we figured 

somehow we can make it there. 

Q. Was there difficulty getting a permit to get out of Germany after 

you got your permit to get into England? 

England? 

Which came first the pemit in 

A. First, we have to have the permit for England and with that we could 

apply for the passport in Germany. 

Q. Did this rake a long time? 

A. It dld not take too long a time with us because we were cleared of 

not having enough money left in Germany pretty easily, because we were 

just young people who didn' t have too much. This took very, vary such 

longer in the case of my father. This is why he in the end could not 

leave because there were difficulties which were maybe only of technical 

appearance. I think he had hls passport before but my mother dldn't 



have the passport in the. And a11 thls took so long. This is why my 

poor parents ncver got out. 

Q. As long as they had money the Germans wanted to keep them in the 

country. Do you think that was the reason? Once you had nothing to 

support you and might possibly became a drain on the economy, 5 suppose 

they wanted you to leave. 

A. I don't really know what their purpose was. But anyway the 

difficulties were large. And my father never wanted really to take the 

risk. Besides he probably could nwer quite sae himself without any 

means and living off hls children who did not have anything etther in 

those days. And it was . . . 

(2. How old was your father by this time? In his sixties? 

A. No, he was in his fifties, late fifties. 

Q. Oh, he was comparably young man still, really. 

A. Ja, to our thinking nowadays, yes. But I think that generation 

before thougllr themselves maybe older than we do now. And of all these 

experiences we had. Desidcs ny father was never such a w ell man. He 

h d in his earlier years this T. B. but 1 had . . .. 

Q. You told me about that, yes. 

A. . . . mentioned it before ancl he was always, 1 mean, whenever he had 

a cold it was more than just a regular cold. He had to take more care 

of himself and he never was athletic or anything like ,that. So mother 

wasn't so well either. She had a lot of arthritis, was very arthritic. 

She went every year to tha-t place in Czechoslovakia, Pystian to take 

those baths. That way they were older than I have thought of myself in 

my mlddle fifties. 

Q Well, they may have aged. I'm sure they did age much more rapidly 

l~ecause of anxiery, of what they were going through. Were they 

eventually sent to a concentration camp or dill they pass .way before? 

A. They were sent away. B11r only in the year of 1942 wc heard about 

It. 

(2. Did you have any communication with them after you left? 

Q. You could write. 

A. IJe heard first in England. We could even telephone and could wr-Fte 

before the war. But as soon as war broke out it was pretty diff 1cul-t to 

correspond. We had same family in Demn~rk. We corresponded via them. 

M brother was at that t-Lme in the United States, We corresponded via 

tle i Unit4 States from England to Germany. And before the war broke out 

they could even send us sometimes packages, small food packages and 

IT;SITT~XCKS-W~LII cne ~L/PE~;--ITLUY- W~TJ yux-rrrn, I - I - - ------ - - ---- 

Hamburg and storage was paid for two years there. And also the 

transportation was paid in to Los Angeles which would have been the 

furtherest port of the United States hut this lift van never arrived 

because the German authorities claimed those things after war broke out 

and took them into their country. Rut after the war was over this was 

the first money they gave us as . . . 

Q. Compensation? 

A. , . . as cornpensation. 



Q. He would also be safer out of London if war came, 

A. Ja. That was before the war. 1 mean we did that in spring, after 

Easter in 1939. And these ladies were wonderful to him. 

Q. How did you meet these ladies or how did this opportunity come 

about? 

A. Hans had first a beautiful chance to get a job In England, 

Q. He was fortunate. 

A. JR. But the English did not permit him to work there. Our biggest 

customer was Cross and Blackwell. And through these Cross and Rlackwell 

people, he could have had a chance to work in, I don't know, the 

surrounding of England. I mean he was a big, he was one of the biggest 

pea growers in England. And he wanted to have Hans there for the time 

we stayed in England and employ him. He even would have had a cottage 

for us to live there and we . . . 

Q. And Hans would supervise or manage thls, 

A. Ja, and manage this way and show him how to conserve the peas like 

we had done in Germany. And he could show him that and he would have 

only done it for the the being that, we stayed in England. 

Q. This farm, if that's what it could be called, that raised peas was a 

supplier of Cross and Rlackwell or did rhey own it? Was it their ~wri 

operation? 

A. No, no, no. 

Q. It just supplied them. 

A. But the English home office did not grant us the permission to work 

there and stay there because we came to England under the auspices that 

we would not work in England and that we would only live there until our 

immigration papers to the United States were settled and we could leave 

for the United States. So this dream was out. 

Q. There was a good deal of unmployment in @rigland at that time I 

think. I went through the same thing when I applied . . . 


Q. I applied for a student visa in 1937 and had to swear by all that 

was holy that I wouldn't even seek emplayment in the United Kingdom. So 

I know what you went through. So Hans was not able to work though you 

intimated, I think, that this would have been creating more employment 

for other people. Because Hans was trained ta do this kind of thing, to 

raise and dry peas and get them ready for the marker. 



A. Yes, but it just wasn't granted to us. And in order not to be 

unemployed and not do anything as a young man, he volunteered his work 

at the Bloomsb~ry House. It was the organization who helped and 

organized the Jewish immigration fr~m Germany, Austria, Czachos1ovak;ta 

and so on. 

Q. Was this called Bloomsbury IIouse because it was in that area of 

London called Bloombury? 

A. Yes, yes. It was the joint distribution of, I don't: really know. I 

mean it's what later on the Federation came out it. The Jevish 

Federation. And there were some very high officials who helped us 

sponsor this. There was for instance Lady Rdding who was one of the 

sponsors there, 

Q. What actually did Hans do there? 

A, Registered and helped the people findllng jobs if they were already 

in England. I mean it was kind of an employment sarvice first, And 

later months after the war had hroken out and these people, they 're all 

conuldered enemy aliens because they were Germans and some were not even 

Jewish hecause they were only under the ~azi's 

. . . 

(1. Laws. 

A. , . . laws, conslderlrl Jews. And many of them had to go into the 

intermmt camps of the Isle of Wight. And when it became winter and 

then there was a lot of difficulties that they did not have their 

luggage because their luggage they stored somewhere in the Rloamabury 

House. And they needed people to settle all these things and find them 

thc passports and help them wlth their immigration. Because many were 

there just for the time being and were waiting for their permits to get 

into Canada, the United States, Australia, or so on. h d all these 

things had to he regulated. 

Q. Well, Bans had to be bilingual, didn't he? Bc us& both English and 

German. 

A. Oh, yes. 

Q. How was your English by this time? Both of you? 

A. I aean by that time we had lived in England already for a little 

while. We always knew English. We always had practiced It, we had 

corresponded in it, and for our leisure we ha$ only read English books. 

And of course, the daily use, you got more used to it and improved it. 

Q. 1Hd you ever work there too? 

A. 1 only worked a few days when things got very hectic. And I 

volunteered my work for a few hours. 



Q. 

Was Hans paid enough for the two of you to live? 

A. It was very poor and nowadays the circumstances of a whole, a big 

pay check he brought home were two pounds ten which was a little more at 

that time than it is now. 

Q. Twelve do1 lam. 

A. But even that was not too much. But we could kind of live on it. 

We were very, very frugal. We had taken along from Germany a lot of 

clothing, but we never needed any clothing. We had taken along 

cosmetics. We had taken along pbarmaceuticsl supplies which we partly 

had wen sold. We had taken along photographic supplies. We had to pay 

for each of these photographic supplies. For instance a double tax in 

Ge many. 

Q. To take them out? 

A. To take them out. But . . . 

Q. But the English didnt t charge you to bring them In? 

A. No, they didn't charge us. 

Q. I wondered about that. We've gotten so far away from your 

photographic business. If you had brought any of your cameras or thlnga 

like that with you. 

A. Ja. I had taken into England my photographic equipment that I; had 

put into two big, huge boxes. It was crated and I had, 1 mean as I had 

photographic equipment I was a registered photographer in Germany and I 

had my darkroom equipment and I had a little, for the immigration I had 

it a little bit more modernized. I brought me a new enlarger, a new 

printer and had a I'ittle bit more of the commsrcial outfit. But for 

each of these pieces of equipment 1 had to pay what I bought new at 

least twice the price to the German authorities fn taxes. 

Q. But it did go, travel with you to England. It wasn't held the way 

your other equipment was? 

A. No, because we had this packed in together with the most necessary 

beddings that we bad, maybe a exchange of linens enough with us. I don't 

think we had any dishes with us. I had later on, I had some room, I 

should have put a lot of more Items in there. The only thing wag there 

was space enough to put the silver tray of our, my mother had given me 

her silver ~etting, tea setting, you know, And I had only taken the 

silver tray because it was a flat thing and we just had room enough on 

top. But unfortunately I didn't take any more than this. And of course, 

our clothing was with us. 

Q. Why couldn't this other, your furniture and your bedding and things 

which were all, confiscated, why couldn't that have traveled with you 

too? You said you had storage. 

A. I would have to pay storage in England and we knew we didn't have 

any money in England. And we did not know how long this . . , 



Q. 

Stay in England would take place. 

A, . . . stay in England would be. hnd we did also not know at that 

time if we really would get into the United States or If it would happen 

to US that maybe something else would come up. Like we would go to 

Canada or we would go to Australia, 

Q. So you planned to send for this later? 

A. We planned to send for it the moment we knew what would happen 

further 00 for us. Why, with these things, these boxas we could take 

right into a room while this lift van was too large. It was like a tiny 

little garage. You know, I mean not a real one but like a shed, a tool 

shed size. And that I could never bring into a house unless I have a 

real house. But I had only, we did n0.t know what would happen SO us. 

Q. How long had you been in England before Hans was able to go to work 

at Bloomsbury House? 

A. Oh, that wa$ only, I mean after this deal with . . . 

Q. Cross and Blackwell. 

A. . . . Cross and Blackwell fell through. We started right there then 

to do that that he would not walk the streets because he was a nervous 

man and he was used to go every day and do something. And It was pretty 

narrow in our one single room where 1 had nothing bur one single little 

ring to cook on with the gas. 1 had to put my shillings in there and 

had to develop this certain kind of technique to cook a full three 

course meal or four course meal on it. Rut as we were young we didn't 

mind so much . . . 

Q. Things like that are an adventure when you're young. 

A. When you are young, 1 mean Just like going out camping. It was kind 

of a steady camping at the time. And we still had very nice friends 

because the other people, most of the people we knew were in the same 

boat like we were, They were all poor. 

Q. In what part of London was this room you rented? 

A. In Golder's Green. 

Q. That's where your cousins lived, is that right? 

A. That's where my cousins lived. 

Q. We missed some of the tape and it cut off and we dldn't know it so 

I'm not sure what we're repeating. I thfnk that you will have to 

explain to me again how Peter happened to go into the school in which he 

lived moat of the the you were in London. 

A. Hans with his contact with the Rloomsbury Bouse met a lady who was 

looking for help for her hostel. She was io charge of a youth hostel 

for boys between the years of twelve and sixteen who had come as 



immigrants or yourhs, refugee children who came on a youth transfer Into 

this Ilkley, Yorkshire. And lIans got to talk to her and she saw that 

Peter was much too young for that grouping for her size of hostel. But 

she knew of two ladies, Miss Kirby and Hiss Corey, who had this small 

school in her town, And they plantled to do somethldg for a rafugee 

child and she saw as well that this may be our Peter to do that for him. 

And this is how he came To Ilkley. Accidently the couple first was 

another couple Xn this youth hosrel hut my own sister-in-law and 

brother-in-law were later, in later years the , . . 

9. The couple who took care, the custodians. 

A. . . . couple who took care of this youth hostel. 

Q. So Peter went up to Yorkshire and then you followed him at one 

point, didn't you? 

A. P followed him after the war broke out because at that the the 

little school kind of exploded in size and had all the old graduates who 

h d gone ro schools outside of Ilkley, boarding schools or the like, 

they cane back to thar school and instead of having only the four grades, 

they got about double or triple in she and tvok the older, the graduates 

of that school plus a few other girls from that area. And they needed 

special help domestically. And it was relatively nice for meb 1 could 

work as a domestic there but I also, 02 coarse, with the older girls T 

even participated in some of the classes, had some of the literature 

with It and had the steady contact where tha little childraa who always 

asked me everything in English which I had to come up with answers 

naturally because . . 

Q. It was the best possi1)le experience there is. 

A. That was a good experience and they speak a little slower than 

ordinary grown-up. And it gave me a very good practice in my English. 

Q. 

And did you stay there mtil you were ready to go to America? 

A. No, Bans felt very lonely. He came up at Christmastlrne and we were 

all together, By that time already my brother and sister-in-law had 

been up there and we ha? a real kind of family reunion for the Christmas 

up there and could celebrate together which was kind of nice. But then 

he felt too lonely and I joined him at a later date because by that time 

the teachers were organized again and had enough help and could manage 

very easily. And I went back to London. 

Q But you left Peter in the school? 

A. I left Peter at the school and he came to visit us on each holiday 

to stay with us in London. 

0. Then at what the did you get the htnformation that your visa had 

come through for America? 



A. That was in the end of August 1940. 

Q. That must have been a very exciting day, How did you receive the 

news? 

A. That was very exciting but at the same time England was expecting 

the invasion of German forces every day and there was a lot of air raid 

warnings going on. The whole of England was blacked out anyhow. 

Q. Had there been any bombings by that time? 

A. There were bombings in the surrounding of London. mere had not 

been so much in London at that the. Rut thcre were air raid watnings 

consistently. I had the hardest time getting my suitcases finally 

packed, I had to send Peter down to the shelter all the time and I just 

wanted to ger on and didn't go down for my own safety because otherwise 

I just didn't have the time. Hans had t~ get his last papers at the 

American consul and could hardly make it by cab down to there to get the 

papers all i n order because the cab driver refused to drive. And it was 

pretty hard to get cmmunlcation In those days. 

Q. How did you come to America? 

A. Now, we came to America, of course we had no means but our couslna 

and these . . 

Q. Your orher sponsors . . . 

A. No, not the sponsors. That was, you see this is where the 

Bloomsbury House helped us. They paid part of our fare. Bccauae our 

ticket, what we had paid from Germany was of course during war times 

invalLd. And that didn't help us. 

Q. You had bought R ticket all the way to America, is that it? 

A. We had bought a ticket all the way to America. But that didn't help 

us my. I know I even wanted to give my cousins my little hit of jewelry 

I had but they didn't want to take it. And in later years we could pay 

it back . . 

Q. So your cousins helped put up some of the money for your tickats? 

A. They helped us for the tickets, yes. And we wanted to pel1 some of 

our equipment but unfortunately we couldn't. Some of it w fas stolen. 

Q. Oh, no. How and where? 

A. While wc were packing we thought we had some spare equ 

we could sell but it was stolen at the time when we packed 

boxes and had to crate it. 

Q, 

You mean the people who were crating it for you? 

ipmeat which 

it into these 

A. Preparing It. Because when 1 packed it I knew it was gotten in and 

when 1 unpacked it it wasn't there. 




Q. Did you have to wait long to get on a boat to go to America after 

you had your permit to go? 

A. No, in those days still some boats went. Rut of course there was 

the terrible story of thc Andrea Doria. Hans has beautifully written 

a whole story about It and there were so many of the English children 

went down with the boat through bombing. We went accidental, T mean we 

did not know from where we were supposed to leave because we left upon 

the station in England and the train took us to a port. 

Q. You did not know what port it was? 

A, We did not know what the port it was. We get in the blackout train 

and in the morning then we saw some signs, We saw to the River Clyde so 

we figured we should have been in Glasgow. And we left from Glasgow and 

incidental it was an anchor line. 

Q. Oh, that's very Interesting. A-N-C-H-0-R, Of course. 

A. And Cameranfa was the boat. And this was an upen boat because the 

boat was really built for only about nine hundred passengers but it was 

all open and it had about twelve hundred passengers. And many of them 

were English children who got evacuated. 

Q. When you say all open, you mean people were sleeping up on the 

decks? 

A. No, no, no. Not like that. But they dldn't have the classes . . . 

Q. Oh, yes. There was one class. 

A. It was one class. We always had to wear our life vests, was it 

called life vests . . . 

Q. Life jackets. 

A, Life jackets. We could not go withour them anywhere. 

Q. You even sleep in them? 

A. We had it right next to us when we slept. And for the children it 

was great fun because it had a mine sweeper in the front and it had anti 

aircraft gun in the one part and they played war and God knows whar all 

the t he. For us it was not quite so nice to think and see that all the 

time. But many of the people on our boat, the men had been avacuated in 

some of these internment camps and their wive8 had been in England. 

They hadn' t seen each other for all these months of war and they only 

met at the boat . . . 

Q. The dockside. 

A. . . . the dockside for the first time, And we were kind of, I mean 

we were many young people all from our well educated background. We bad 

good food on the boat which was much better than the rationing in 

England. And we had, we made us kind of a gay time because it was open 

again. As a matter of fact at the very end of the trip we even had a 



little performance where we sang all the songs we had put together, you 

know. And I remember some of the songs. And we thought we made some 

friends for life but of course then everybody had to struggle when we 

came. It was great when we saw the Statue of Liberty. 

Q. Were you really impressed as so many immigrants? 

A. Yes, we were tremendously, tremendously impressed because at the 

same time we arrived at night and you saw the little clgws of light 

beaming. And we hadn't seen any light in the blackout England for all 

these months. And the children had hardly remembered any lights any 

more because they knew when it got dark you had to pull the curtains and 

you were not allowed to leave a little slit of light outside. Those 

were the ordinances, the bathrooms were blacked out and you were not 

allowed to go Into them until all the curtains were drawn in a room and 

then you only were allowed ro turn a light on. But there were never any 

streetlights. There were very subdued lights with the cars. They had 

these little slits and none of these lights would light upward but only 

to the ground. And traffic lights were also eliminated. 

Q. This must have been very difficult for Hans getting back home from 

work i f it was after dark. 

A. Oh, no. It wasn'r that way because . . . 

Q. Because he rode the subway or he rode tha underground. 

A. He rode the subway and we lived very close to the subway and it was 

near we looked down to the subway station. I mean our room wasnf t so 

elegant. (laughs) 

Q. And he knew his way of course. But I should think fopt traffic must 

have been difficult when there were no street lights and things until you 

learned your way around. 

A. Ja. I mean you mostly did not go too far away from home. 

Q, Were mogt of the people of the Cameronla German refugees other than 

English children coming over? 

A. English children and German refugees. Ja. 

Q. How many days long was your crossing? 

A. That was strange too. We must have gone very far up north because 

we thought it got very cold and even it was August. And we needed our 

coats most of the tFme on the boat when we were outside especially in 

the evening. And only when we, just ~hortly before we arrived, it took 

ten days the trip. And when we were closer to the United Stares when 

that little boat same first that we saw before we saw the Statua of 

Liberty . 



Q. What time of year was this that you crossed? 

A, That was in September the tenth when we arrived. 

Q. It would have been normal, and fairly warm straight acrosa the 

Atlantic. But you obviously had gone up north. 

A. It was longer because we had gone up north. 

Q. What kind of accommodations did you have on the boar? Were you very 

crowded? 

A. Oh, no, It was pretty nice. We had such a cabin, I think one was 

on top of the other. 

Q. Bunks, 

A. Banks. And Peter, there was such a tiny little couch or so which 

they made up for hlm. So it was, it wasn't anything first class. 

Q A So you had privacy. 

A, We had ps lvacy . 

Q. Your family was just . . , 

A. We were just done together. And when we arrived we were greeted by 

the HIAS which is an old Jewish organization which came together in the 

times when we had a lot of Jewish immigration from the eastern countries 

in the end of the last century, beginning of the century. 

Q. And their representatives met you. 

A. And they met us, our cou~ins met us. The last affidavit we got from 

him, he came. And he recommended to us that we should go ta this HIAS, 

that they would take care of us. 

sit there a very long the. 

Rut we didn't quite know. We had to 

Q. Was this an off ice in Manhattan? 

A. Yes, they gave us shelter and they put us up in hotels which is not 

the klnd of hotels you mostly frequent. Becauae they rented also rooms 

by the hour. And sometimes we young mothers, the bathrooms were on the 

floor, we knocked on each other's door, that we did not have to go one 

with our children to the bathroom but we could go two together. And the 

first night they fed us It was on such tin plates. 

Q. I suppose because this hotel was so cheap, Is that why they put you 

up there7 It didn't cost much? 

A. Ja. It didn't cast much. h d was around the corner fr~m the BIAS. 

And they fed us in this organization with such tin plates, But the next 

morning we had, maybe we had a little pocket money and me of our 

affidavit givers even sent us twenty dollars and said you should make 

yourself a nice time and we could go and see the World's Fair. 



Q. Oh, of course. This was 1940. And the World's Fair started in 

1939. It was still on. 

A. It was still on and we made us a nice day. 

Q. Well, how long did you have to stay in this hotel, just one night? 

A. No, no. We stayed approximately two weeks. Later on we could go 

over to the HIAS building. When they had room for us. 

Q. And have a room there? 

A. Ja. It was a190 not, L mean it was more like R hostel or somethfng. 

But we were then also together in one room. 

Q. Where did your cousin live, the one who met you? In New York? 

A, JR, he lived in Mew York. He had an apartment in New York . . . 

Q, But didn't have room for your famil.y? 

A. No, I think he had rented it before to my brother but we didn't have 

the price to pay for the thing. And this organization took care of us. 

And as my brother had moved before to Springfield, IlZlnoia, it was our 

wish to go in the end to Springfield, Illinois. But Hans was trying to 

get hlmself some commissions. And he had some, he found some people 

where he could, he figured, sell some ties or some shirts and because 

this was a little bit of his own line, and he thought maybe this is what 

he would do and he wanted to look ofit In the big city of Vew Yosk where 

manufacturers were. And we had a few contacts and he thought he c~uld 

come to Springfield with some kfnd of idea. 

Q. Wlth business already established. 

A. . . . some kind of business idea where he could travel for and make 

a ll~ing that way In Springfield, Illinois. Because my brother's job 

with the mill here was a very low paying job, 

Q. Dorothy, when did your brother come to America, how much sower than 

you and Hans? 

A. Ny brother left Hamburg a month later than we did. Rut he could go 

directly to the United States. My sister-in-law's father had a first 

cousin here and they had already once been to the United States to make 

out with this man that he would get them in case of danger @a affidavit. 

And this is why they had that and had registered way ahead of us wirh 

this security behind them. 

Q. And how did they happen to come to Springfield, Illinois? 

A. They had in the big cities, a new settling committee which gave 

people the idea not to stay all in the East bur to try to get into 

certain areas of the United St~tes. And as my brother was in our 

business and he had heard in Springfield and wrrounding they grow 

beans, he saw they were soybeans which were a little different but he 

thought it was something simflar to what Had of buslness he waq used 



ro, And luckily he found employment, Even it was .mall with a firm. 

Q. What was the name of the firm? 

A. I mean the name of the man was Ike Sinaiko. It was the soybean mill 

of Spri~gfield, It had a name. 

Q. I do remember. We' 11 loolc the name up and put it on, And so he had 

come and that of course is the reason that you declded that you would 

come to Springfield. 

A, Ja. Because these were our closest relatives and we had always been 

very well befriended with each other. 

Q. Going back to New York, I digressed a little. Hans was trying to 

make some connection whereby he might handle merchandise, have 

something. And nothing came of that? 

A. He took it all along and tried to sell it here. 

Q. 

You mean he was given samples? 

A. He was given samples by the companies and traveled a little b it in 

that line. 

Q. Was this while he was still in New York? 

A. Ja, he got the samples and I think some of them were scot to him at 

a later date. But anyway we stayed about a month in New York and tried 

all these chances to see what would come. And then the Federation paid 

for our transportation by bus to Springfield. We first made even a 

stopover in Chicago where we had some friends. And I think they paid 

for that too to put us up for one night in the Y hotel. 

Q, But you were able to visit your friends? 

A. Ja, and we codd. And here because this was Bans' best friend who 

had just started in some, I don't know, I think he had a job. He used 

to be a young lawyer in Germany but of course here he could only find 

employment in the business world. I mean, law, it's no good la another 

country. 

Q. This was early fall, October? 

A, October, ja. 

Q. When you canle here. 

A. Rut beautiful. We saw the whole lovely country on the bus. 

Q. Werc you impressed with the size of America as you rolled on? 

A. Ja, how bfg it was and huge it was. And seeing and going through 

the mountains in Pennsylvania and then later on the flat prairie of 

course was a little disappointment but maybe not quite so for us because 

we came from East Prussia, a very straight country too. 


Dorothy hkes 

Q. You're used 

A. We are used 

of flat country 

to farming. 

to flat country. Of course not the huge and huge 

that we saw here. 

mounts 

Q. I think we' 11 leave for our next taping the story of your beginnings 

in Springfield, But Just for a minute I want to ask you if you really 

met with kindness in this country, if you were pleased or if you were 

dieappointed with the reception you got from strangers? 

A. No, we were very, very pleased. J mean, we came here and there were 

all just our Jewish holiday; Yom Kippur was about the next day and we 

all went to temple with my son. My brother had a little boy and we had 

our son and we went there and of course we had nice clothing. 

Q. This was in New York? 

A. No, in Springfield. 

Q. Oh, after you got here. 

A. When we got here. And people came to visit us here. And they were 

all very kind to u$ when they came to see us as greenhorns and newcomers 

to see how we would look. And my sister-in-lav had started to sew 

corwts and gloves. That's what she had Learned before ahe had left 

Germany that she would be able to do something. And she had found 

herself a certain group of customers in the nice society circle of 

Springfield, And she was pretty good in her trade. And had told some 

of the people that she expected her sister and brother-in-law. And her 

sister-in-law was a photographer and you will see what she does. She 

works very well. And this was a little bit of a recommendation that 

when we later on started, when people saw my pictures, they recommended 

us to become photographers. 

Q. Had you done anything with photography during the months you were in 

Eng 1 and 7 

A. Yes, a little bit. It was only for friends and because officially I 

was not allowed . . . 

Q. Permitted to work. 

A. Ja, I had the use of a darkroom and I had a cousin who was a doctor 

and he had a very nice darkroom for his xray work and he let me use it. 

And I also got acquainted with another photographer w h ~ let me also use 

his things. But I only did it for friends, you know. Like for instance 

this Lady Redding wanted me very much to take her chi1dren18 picture and 

it would have heen a recommendation for me. But as correct as my husband 

was he didn't permit me to go out these and take the pictures of the 

children. 

Q. Well, you real1.y couldn't afford to jeopardize your position in 

England, really. You might have been deported. 

A. So I only did some enlargements for friends and occa~ioaally 1 

photographed same, 



Q. Well, I think we're going to run out oE tape again very soon. And 

80 probably this is a good place to stop afid at our next taping session 

we will gtart with your arrlval in Springfield and how you went about 

setting up your business here. 

END OF TAPE 

Q. Dorothy, when we stopped taping last time you and Bans had just 

arrived In Springfield, Illinois. Sometime way back in the first tape I 

Forgot to ask you your maiden name which ties in with your sponsor and 

your brother here in Springfield, What was your maiden name? 

A. Nadel . N-A-D-E-L. 

Q. Then was your brother Eric Nadel? 

A. Yes. 

Q. And he was working for Ike Sinalko and what waa the name of his 

company? 

A. The Illinois Soy Product8 Company. 

Q, 

How long had he been here before you and Bans arrived? 

A. They had about, T think a year and three months, maybe fourteen or 

fifteen months, 

Q. So they were really established? 

A. In a way, 1 mean they knew people ~lready and had made some friends. 

Q. Did your brother go on to an~ther business after the Soy Products 

Company was dissolved? As I remember it went out of existence, didn't it 

after the war? 

A. No, my brother actually stayed with them all the time. The Illinois 

Soy Products Company was sold to Cargill which is a large chain which is 

well known i n the country. And Eric became the general manager of the 

plant and business for Carglll. 

Q. But he was still in Springfield? 

A. Ile was still in Springfield. And after that the business was sold 

in later years to Slnaiko's brother and 1 think they may have taken on 

again that name of, but I'm not quite sure about it. Agafn Illinois Soy 

Products Company. And my brother managed it until this Mr. Sinaiko who 

sold it to him and they had also a second plant in Decatur. And both 

fellows went into partnership, the manager of the Decatur plant and my 

brother here. Bbt my brother was the man who did everything here In the 

Springfield plant. Bur I think they both had put in equal amounts of 

money. They ran it together but my brother had full responsibility for 

the plant. 


Dorothy Ankr -5 6 

Q, Had yovr brother worked back in Germany in your father's buginess7 

A, Yes. That was his whole goal to come to this area because he 

noticed that beans were involved in this kind of businass. He didn't 

quite know the difference of soybeans from beans for people consumption. 

Q. Soybeans were never grown in Germany befare the war, were they? 

A. No. No. I don1 t even know if they are grown now. I don't think 

rh~r the climate is very good for it. I think you need mpre heat like 

you find it here In Lllfnois and the climate in Gemaey is different. 

We have a cooler climate. 

Q. You don't have the hot nights that we do. 

PI. We don't have the hot nights, we don't hme the long summers and 

just not conditions for it. I mean it's of course a different process 

here. They did process out of the bean, the soybeans, the oil and made 

that useful and also the soyhean meal. 

. Thcre are many, many uses of soybeans, 

A. Many different uses of soybeans, 

Q. Is your broth~s still living here? 

A, No, he gave, the business was not too good in the. years in the early 

sixties. And he saw an opportunity to go to California where he is doing 

the same rhing bat on a much larger basis. Because the plant there does 

not only have soybeans but also peanuts. It makes a peanut oil and mme 

other kind of oil, 1 don't really know how it's called. 

Q. We'll think of it afterwhile. 

A, They are huge plants there that's just processing oils out of 

dif Eerent products. 

Q. So your brother is still in California? 

A. He is still in California and he is still working in this line of 

business. 

Q. And is his wife also living out there? 

A. His wife is, sure, licving with him bat she hasn't dcrne anything of 

that sort. $he was in later years, I mean, with the developing of our 

business she helped us in our business. 

Q. We should get back to you and your business. After all, this is 

your story. You arrived in Springfield by bus, you and Hans and Peter. 

And were met, J: presume, by your brother and sister, 



A. Yes. 

9. At the old bus station. I can't remember mere it used to be, 

A. Yes. And by that time my brother who first had lived in a lfttle 

apartment on North Fourth Street, he and his wife had rented a small 

bungalow on Spring Street, on 1407 South Spring. 

Q. And they took you ,there? 

A. And they took us there. And it was only a small bungalow. It was a 

typical way, the American bungalows are furnished with two bedrooms, one 

living room, one dining room and a kitchen, 

Q. One bath? 

A. And ode bath, And a basement. 

Q. How long did you and Hans and Peter stay there? 

A. We lived these fur about eight months together, the two fanlilies. 

The two boys used the one bedroom, the Nadels used the other bedroom, 

and we used the dining room with one of these couch beds as our sleeping 

possibilities. But in this room we also had put a small background and 

during the day time it didn't look like a bedroom. It looked like a 

living room. And we took occasionally pictures at that place. 

9. Before you started taking pictures, or maybe you started right in 

the beginning, you said Hans was trying to make a connection with some 

of the merchants to sell, was It shirts and ties? 

A. No, he got himself some shirts and ties and belts from an Rgency. 

Q, He bad the agency for them or he was . . . 

A. He got them or he bought them and he tried to sell something in 

stores here. He went to Peoria and Decatur and it wasn't too successfulb 

And people saw my pictures which I had taken. I always had made me a 

ledger of pictures to show. 

Q. Now how did people happen to see them? 

A. Now there were different occasions. First of all my sister-in-law 

had starred a small business with sewing carsete and sewing gloves. And 

some of these people came to the house and looked at thm. That was one 

thine. Then we had certain organizations invited us to make a showing 

of the pictures. Like our temple sisterhood did that and I could 

display pictures there for meetings. 

Q. Then you always had It in your mind that you would pmsue your 

photography in this country? 

A. This came because people saw our pictures and when they saw it, they 

thought it makes much more sense for Bans to go around and try to sell 

our pictures. We had a more interesring product that way than this . . 



A. . . . merchandise he had whlch was not anything 50 autstaading. 

Q. Now by this time was Hans also a photogsapber? 

A. No, not quite at the beginning. I mean 1 was the one who took all. 

the pictures but I showed him to help me in the darkroom. We had used 

this basement. We had transformed it into a darkroomb We had brought 

us some equipment along from Germany. And I remember that we had some 

very nice people that were employees of CILCO and they transformed the 

German voltage of 250 to 12.5 that it was useable like for the dryer. 

. This was your developing equipment? 

A. Ja, ja. No, for drying. 

Q. For drying, I see. 

A. For prints. That I remember they came one evening and did that. 

And thought that we who always were the foreigners and we would make a 

good business out of It. I think they wese neighbors. I don't quite 

remember any more where we knew these fellows from, Maybe they wese 

friends of my brother or maybe because through the plant he had made 

some friends. bad that way we could use it, I mean the printer and I 

think the enlarger that was very easy to transform. I think a11 we had 

to do was to put another hed on. But it was a little b it mora 

Intricate like the dryer to transfurtri. 

(2. Now you said it was easier for Hans to sell pictures or to sell 

photography than to sell merchandise, Did he actually go out into the 

community or did most of your exposure come through organizations like 

the sisterhood? 

A. I mean partly they came through that. But partly they came that my 

sister-in-law had establlshecl a small clientele for her corsets and her 

gloves. And she had tried to impreus an interest in us that we come 

with a foreign, German education and are pretty good in taking pictures. 

Q. And with your skills. 

A. And with our skills. And we could get into some of the families. 

And when we came, it was already closer to Chrfstmastime, I mean it was 

the month of October where people's minds are turned to that Chrtstmas 

gift. And photography is always a little bit better in those months and 

actually my brother was terribly impressed that wen in the f$rst weeks 

we could maybe make more money than he had done in his job. But 

course . . . 

Q. What was he earning a-t: that point, do YOU know? 

A, I rhink maybe at that time it may have been from fifteen dollars 

increased to tventy dollars. 



Q. Even though you may have earned in those first months more thad your 

brother-in-law, I don't suppose--your hrother, excuse me. I don't 

suppose your business held up at that rate throughout the whole year. 

A. No, definitely not, I think the whole turnover for rhe vary first 

yeas came to something like a thousand dollars. And I mean you have 

expenses on those and it was a very poor living considered all together. 

But durlng the hot summer months when we hardly made anything, Hans 

worked at the plant and helped carrying bags just to help us a l ittle 

and bring in a few dollars that we could make a living. 

Q. These first plctures that you took, were they all taken in 

individual homes7 

A, %st of them were taken in individual homes. 

i Do you remember your first commissfon? 

A. Yes, as a matter of fact, the very first one was the first evening, 

came Penelope Connelly at those rimes, now Mrs. Jones. And ahe picked 

us up. Her brother was supposed to go Into the Canadian Air Force and 

they had a family reunion. And she came and picked us up by car and we 

took our equipment wer to the Connelly's and we took quite a few 

pictures of the family, single individuals, and group pictures an? a11 

together. And each of our customers kind of worked like a salesman for 

us because they liked what they saw as a finished product. And one 

recommended them to the others. I think after that we had a very lovely 

group of the whole Herndon family. 

Q. Which Berndoa family, was that John or Richard? 

A. That's, I thlnk, John. 

Q. John is the husband of Calista. 

A. JR, John. Rat's it. I mean the whob family without John in it as 

a surprise £or Mrb John Berndon. And all these pictures, I mean, one 

gave us a recommendation to another family. And Hans tried to make 

contacts over the phone with some of these families because they 

recommended us to friends of theirs. And this slowly helped I,IB to get a 

little bit known in the community. 

Q, Ilow many other studios were there, photographic studios, in 

Springfield when you came, do you remember? 

A. Oh, there were always a lot. There were always at least fifteen to 

twenty studios. 

Q. That many in the early days. 

A. 1 think so, ja, Some were small. And I remember when I went to, in 

thom times, Mr. Herbert George who was then a big photographer of 

Springfield. Azld I tried to introduce myself to him as a colleague. He 

gave me the terrible depressing comparison like I would he a 


Dorothy hker 40 

photographer to him like a peddler would be to Myers Brothers, And when 

I came hame with that idea I thought that he had known that we were well 

educated people, that my husband may have been a doctor or something. 1 

mean he had a dniversity degree. And in later years he forgot all about 

that because he became one of our staunch friends and we developed quite 

a friendship with him. 

0.. Oh, that was nice. 

A. Over the years, 

Q. And I'm sure you and Bans were very farglving. At what point were 

you able to set up any kind of a studio ypusself where people could come 

and be photograpbed? 

A. Now we worked from this house where we had actually made us some 

little ghowcases already onto the house. 

Q* In your brother's house? 

A. In this small bungalow, ja. I mean the mall little showcases. 

They were the big pride of our son because he thought now we looked like 

a real studio when we put rhose cases on the outside of the building. 

Q. Did you mak~ the cases yourself? 

A. No, no. We had them made and they looked kind of nice. We 

displayed every week or so another picture in it. And one day Mr, 

Morris Myers who was one of our sponsors came t o pick zip some proofs at 

our place and he saw us all, rhe house was open and he saw us all sitring 

in at: the kitchen table eating a meal and he thought that thie does not 

look very professional and we should rather mwe into a bigger more 

established place if we want to create more business and be more known. 

And there exist& the JewZsh Federation which was set up to help people, 

They collectad money to help Jews from overseas ro establfsh themselves. 

a. Was this a national organization or a local one? 

A. This was a national organization which had a local office. At that 

tfme the local office was more or less working with voluntear people. 

Later on they had an established office with secretary and so on. Rut 

in our times it was really only volunteer, we set up here. Butthey 

collected each year so and so much money which was supposed to help to 

establish Jewish families and in those days they were mcwtly the German 

Jews like we who needed some help because besides us came some other 

families to this state. 

Q, Were these many who came in those years to Springfield? 

A. There were quite a few and some could establish themselves for a few 

years. And nearly all of them ].eft. 

Springfield of our irn~~igratf on. 

1 mean there are very few left In 



Q. Why did they leave? Better opportunities elsewhere? 

A, Yes. They did not find, I mean they had smaller jobs and they could 

not see any advancement. And most of these people had come from better 

careers over there and they thought that they could do better in the 

States but that just Springfield did not have enaugh opportunities for 

them. 

Q. This ~ ' afraid m is the plight of most refugees today. N Q ~ finding 

jobs comparable to those they left behind. So you and Hans in a way are 

a real success gtory. You did build up a business and you did atay. 

Well, now I have digressed. Mr. Morris Myers suggested you move. 

A. He suggested we move. And we found an old house on the corner of 

Second and South Grand which was a big two story house+ and gave us much 

more room. We could have our living, our sleeping quarters upstairs and 

have downstairs two rooms which were actually only dedicated to the 

studio. One large room for the studio and one Large room as a reception 

room. And one in between we had a little dressing room for people and 

the basement again for our darkroom. 

Q. What was the name of your studlo? 

A. The beginning was just Dorothy Anker in Spring Streer. Rut by that 

time we called us the Anker Studio because at that time Hans had started 

to take a few pictures. By the the it became winter of the year 1941 I 

find myself that I was pregnant with our daughter and slowly I became 

pretty large and could not handle it so easily. And at that time he had 

learned much more how to take pictures and took over and I think wlth 

the years he even became a much better photographer than I was. 

Q. 

But you taught hfm all he knew about photography, did you not? 

A. At the beginning, yes. Rut we had to struggle and we had to change 

quite a few of our methods. I mean we were absolutely unfamiliar with 

this heat. You me, In those days we did not have any air conditioning. 

All we had were a few fans. And one day we had a terrible experience 

that we had raken a whole lot of pictures and were starting to dry them. 

And the surface of the film with the heat and the fan nearly rud away. 

And then I came to think of some things, another chemical which I had 

learned at school and tried to translate it into English, to find the 

name for it. That ue first used this for drying the films and could go 

on, 

Q. Did you lose all those films? Of course you did. 

A. Oh, part of them. 1 mean some we could gave. And we had a chance. 

It was samething where we could take some pictures over so it wasn't 

quite that bad but it was terrible. It was a terrible experience for us 

because we had nwer seen anything like it. 

Q. And you didn't know whether you could correct it or not in the 

future. 


Dorothy hker 6 2 

A. Ja. But I could correct it. I mean they helped me In the camera 

shops that this would come about. And then my sister-in-law who was 

very handy with her fingers, she saw how to retouch pictures. had I was 

never the very best with retouching. And I had already starred out to 

try some of the coloring because I had seen that other studios were 

doing. This was something very unfamiliar to us. Rut I tried ir. I 

bought me a set-up and made the first color, oil coloring prints. 

Q. You tinted these. You didn't have colored film, did you? 

A. No, no. Not in those days. No. In those days it was only possible 

to do the very expensive three part film, not the processing which is now 

known a ll over. But you have it in one f ilm and can print from the 

other film. I had, before we immigrated as a matter of fact, I had 

learned how to do thfs complicated process. I had only watched it. 

This one photographer, I went once to Berlin where I cauld see such a 

course in case that would be needed that 1 have at least a little idea 

of it. But I never really practiced that kind of photography. Three 

color separation lr was called. They may still use it as a printing 

process in something, real special printing but as Kodak and Ansco and 

ever SO many others have now perfected all their color procassing, I 

think it is hardly used in commercial photography any more at all. 

Q. But you and your sister-in-law were coloring some of the pictures by 

hand 

A. Ja, we were coloring. And she was starting to retouch. And she had 

an easier hand than me. She could overtake me very soon in her ability 

of doing the art work for us. 

9. Wd she eive up her corset and glove bus~ness? 

A. Yes, by that time she gave that up and helped us and we could pay 

her a 1,ittle bit for these kinds of things. 

9. Then Hans was doing most of the photography while you were having 

Carol Jean. 

A. No. Then came something else. Then the war had come to the United 

States already in 1942. And we were again the foreigners, the enemy 

aliens. And moyt enemy aliens were not allowed to have any photographic 

equipment. And there again Morris Myers was very helpful that he 

vouched for us that we were not enmy aliens. That we were trying to do 

business in this kind of photography and it was our livelihood and we 

needed it for us. 

Q. Now tell me hat being an enany alien involved. Did you have to be 

registered? 

A. Yes, we had to be registered. And in those days we had already our 

business developed chat we were lucky enough to have some high school 

business. And some of the high schools were in the country and we had to 

travel, to go into Morrisonville for instance, or we had to go to, I 

mean at that the, Ball Township. And in those days we had already a 

car. 



Q. Ywu could a€ ford a car by then. 

A. 1 mean -Lt was a used car of course. And we had to have the 

permission from the state for each of these trips to travel with our 

equipment out of the clty limits. 

Q. Idhere did you go to register? Was this with the state or federal 

government? 

A. No, it was the federal government. That's why we knew thnse people 

later on far passports and so on. You know, they came then to us for, I 

mean, after years , . . 

Q, Far the passport pictures, 

A. Yes, for the passport pictures. 

Q. bid you go to the post office? 

A. Ja. To the post off ice. And later on they were very generous. I 

think when we 'had that cstahlishad for a number of years they let us, 

then we just made a phone call that we now have to leave for this place 

or that place. 

Q. But In the beginning you had ro go every time and get a permit? 

A. We had to go down each time and get a permit to get . . . 

0, Just to go out here to Ball Township High School for example. 

A. Ja. Ja. 

Q. What a misance. Bdt you never were actudlly stopped from taking 

your pictures? 

A. No, no, And I mean we were lucky enough that we had established a 

little business with these high schools because they gave us a certain 

income, for the qulet times. You had always to be a little cheaper with 

these high school contracts. But they gave us some business during the 

more quiet times, more something all during the year. But there was 

also something else. Bans first thought he would be drafted into the 

Army. And he went through the whole examination and waa declared lh. 

Rut when it came to the ~crual draft by that time he had reached the age 

of 38 and was declared too old to be in the army and they dLd not want 

his ~ervice any more. 

Q. Now had you applial for citfzenship by that the? 

A, Yes, we had applied the moment we had arrived, But during the war 

they did not make citizens. I mean they waited until later. 

(2. But they did draft foreigners? 



A. Yes, they did draft and they made some of these fellows who ware in 

the army immediate citizens when they sent them overseas. But those 

were the only people who became citizens during that time. The regular 

cirlzenships wese all a little postponed because I think my brother who 

was here before us only became a citizen in the yeas of 1945 and we 

became citizens in the year of 1946. While maybe orherwlse he would 

have already become r-l citizen in 1944. But those were the war years and 

they didn't do that. But what T meant to say was that Hans wanted to do 

something for the war effort and applied for a -job at Allis-Chalmess. 

And he worked nights for Allis-Chalme~s as an inspector from midnight 

till elght. Or was it from eleven to seven, I don't know. Anyway he 

came home when we all had breakfast and we had breakfast together. And 

of course his hours with the studio here were, then a little mare liaited 

because he needd his day rest to get his night sleep. 

. And was he trained to be an inspector by the company? 

A. No, I mean when he came out there he applied for that work, And it 

wasn't such a difficult work that he couldn't manage it. I mean the pay 

wasn't anything like what they pay nowadays, Be made 1 thlnk eighty or 

ninety cents an hour, lbar was the limit. 

Q. 1 had always had the understanding that daring the war years the pay 

had gone up to be pretty much, well, it was better than in the Depression 

uf course. 

A, It was probably In the Depression only fifty cents or sorrlething like 

that. And here it was rhls. I mean it gave us a regular income besides 

the studio. And it was also much harder to manage the studio because we 

did not have a large quota of films. And films were very much rationed. 

And we had to go back to some glass plates which we found in St. Louis. 

We found a supply house and had to take some pictures on that, And we 

never quire knew on what kind of paper we were printing it besavse we 

were also limited with paper. When we took s~metimes an order and then 

we had to go to St. Louis to the supplier who gave us, and I had tn try 

out how to print on this and that paper. They were all different foreign 

papers ever so often. It was a little difficult. But as I had known 

from school not to do everything so mechanically like some of our employees 

are doing now, I didn't mind experimenting a little bit and could satisfy 

our orders and could sarisfy our customers. 

Q. You wese not limit& in the supplies you were able to get because 

you were aliens any more than other photo~raphers, were you? 

A. No, no. The only thing was that an establishd studio who could 

tell them that they had that much tarnover last year, they got a larger 

quota of the regular amount. When we as newcomers who did not have, we 

couldn't tell them that we always had this and this mch film. So we 

hHd it a little more difficult than the other well establishsd studios. 

. This entailed quire a few trips to St. Louis. Was that your supplier, 

always 111 St. Louis? You couldn't get -these things up here? 



A. flu, we couldn't get them here. 

Q. And did you have gas to drive or did you go down on the old 

int erurbaa? 

A No, for that we had gas, And for that of course we had tn have the 

permisgion from the state to go into another state. Bflt we got that. We 

could do that. 

Q. Did your buslness not increase because of all the soldiers going 

away and families wanting p l c 

tuses of them and that kind of thlng 7 

A. Ja. That kind of scntlrnental feellng in the family brought the 

families very mch together. And it probably increased our bushess in 

some ways more than it would have otherwise. 

Q. So that your business, your restriction really came from your lack 

of supplies as much as from your lack of custamcrs, clientele? 

A. Ja. Ja. No, our business grew during those months even, I mean ir 

was more or less my sister-in-law and 1. Bans just helped us In h-1s off 

hours but he could not help us as much as he h d done before. So it was 

nice to have my sister-in-law and me to do that, And meanwhfle our 

children grew up . . . 

Q. Peter was in school at this t ime, of course. 

A. Ja. 

Q. IXlring the school year, he was full the in school, was he not? 

A. Oh, yes, He was full time in school, And Carol Jean was a baby. 

But as we lived in the same building 1 could keep her upstairs in, I: 

mean partly in the cril?, partly in the playpen. She was not, we had a 

back porch there. T had her on the hack porch in the playpen. And 

could always look after her. 1 mean I was not quite as much sitting 

with her because I had to spend my hours in the darkroom and she had to 

occupy herself more on her own. But it wasn't $0 hard. 1 had even a 

little colored high sc11001 girl who came and helped me for a few hours. 

Because I mean you did not have anyrhing like throw away diapers in 

those days. You had to wash them all. And we only had primitive washing 

machine and had to hang the things outside up to dry or during the bad 

weather in the basement next to our films. (laughter) Rut we managed. 

I mean we were young people. I was always vary busy. I very vftan 

a£ ter supper had to do a lot of work i n the darkroom when my children 

were in bed. I always was working. X mean we never had too much leisure. 

Q. Uow long did Hans work at Allis-Chalmers, until the end of the war? 

A, I think it was about two and a half years when . 

Q. The war was aver in 1945. 



A. Ja. And she was born in 1942. Ja. He probably worked until nearly 

the end of the war. 

Q. Was he also during those years trying to keep the books? 

A. Oh, ja. He kept the books because . . . 

Q. He was always the business manager, wasn't he? 

A. Ja, hc wag always the business manager. And he did the organizing 

and buying. And by the end of that time we thought we had, we could 

afford to part from my brother and sister with, I mean we had lived 

together for five years all together. 

Q. Oh, they lived on Second and South Grand wirh you. 

A. Wlrk us, yes. 

Q. 1 didn't realize. I thoughr you had moved out. 

A. No, we had lived all rogether for f ivr years. And by thac time, you 

see they had come with their Lift Van because they had come straight rn 

the United States. So they had furnishings and furniture. While we did 

not have that. We had only just the necp_ss~~y change of beddfngs and 

some people had given us a big bed to sl.eep in. Someone had given us a 

crib for the baby. 

Q Did the Jewish Federation locally help to supply these things for 

you or did they simply loan money? 

A. They loaned us only four hundred dollars to open up the studio, 

which we paid hack penny by penny. I mean by ren dollars per month 

payments. 

(1. You said you had paid back the people who helped you with your 

tickets to get to Springfield . . . 


(2. How long did it take you to pay back all these debts you had 

incurred ? 

A. Now, the debts in England we could slowly pay back through some 

money which was coming to us from a compound called Clarew which was 

the chemical my brother-in-law Hans Lltten had worked far in Germany. 

And he had gotten the formula and Hans was lucky enough to be able to 

sell this chemical to a firm in England. hnd they paid us in English 

money and we could pay back our English debts through the income we had 

from this interest. 



Q. Now I have two questlons. Hans Litten was masriad to Hans' ~ister. 

A. To Hans' sister. 

Q. 

And was this a household cleaning compound of some kind? 

A. It was, but it was used in dairies for cleaning the milk bottles and 

the milk containers. 

Q. Before the days of plastlc and paper contalness. 

A, Yes. No, I mean the bigger where they put first the milk in and 

then. , . 

Q. Oh, the big mllkcans and containers. 

A. The big milkcans and the big things where they sterilized tbm for 

homogenizing and these kfnds of things. 

Q. How did your brother-in-law happen to get into this? Was thig 

something he brought from Germany with him? 

A. He had brought this from Germany. He had worked for that firm in 

Ge many. 

Q. And did Hans work with hlm In England on this for a while? 

A. No, we were earlier In England than the Ltttens were. And he was 

lucky able to sell it to mme firm who produced it in England. And they 

had to pay us a sum . . . 

Q. Small commission. 

A. . . , s mall commission. And they paid that over the years with a 

small interest where of course Hans Litten goT the most of it and we 

only got a little part. 

Q. How long did these payments go on? Several years? 

A. Yes, several years and that's why slowly out of that income WE could 

pay back our debts we had left in England. 

Q. Then how long did it take you pay off thoee in America? By the end 

of the war had you paid them off for example? 

A. No, I don't qulte remember any more. It didn' t take too long. 1 

mean if you asked Mrs. Hammerslough who was then the treasurer. You 

know Jen Hammerslough? 

Q. Yes. 

A. She thought we paid it back much to^ faot, Even in nowadays because 

she thought we did not even have to pay it back. 



Q. You did not pay interest on these, did you? 

A. No, no. They let us have that money without any interest. 

Q. Well, Hans is working. You are taking care of two children, running 

the studio with the help of your sister-in-law, and then the war cpmes 

to an end, and Hans comes back full time to the photography busiaess. 

A. Yes. 

Q. He did not work at any other business after that, did he? 

A. No, by that time we could increase the business during those years. 

We had ~ccumulated qulte a few more schools and we had made already a 

little bit of a name for ourselves. 

Q. I presume that it was getting harder and harder to get the equipment 

you needed though during the war years, I mean as the war went on. 

A. Yes, hut after the war was over we had . . . 

Q. You had plenty then? 

A. . . . we had enough equipment. I mean wg were never like some 

photographers are, going overboard and buying everything of the most 

modern equipment. We were never too keen in spending too much on this. 

We went to corlventi~ns to see what was modern. We rather developed in 

other lines, in another angle to increase the business, 1 mean we made 

more social contacts. We did more advertising. 1 think we were one of 

the first ones who used the steady electronic equipment and advertised 

that. We had, you know, when that first came out for , . . 

Q. 1 don1 t know. Can you explain so . . . 

A. Ja. You see that you don't take flash bulbs d l the time but that 

you have the electronic equipment that you can use continuing flashes 

and which of course helped us in those days we had still a very nice 

children's business which we now do not have so much because there are 

so many what we call kidnappers in town. They come in and work from a 

store for a little while. They don't pay the city taxes and do wrk for 

a little bit in the store and then go away and belong to a big outfit, a 

big nationwLde outfit. 

Q. And cut prices. 

A. And cut prices. Ja. It was not quite in those years right after 

the war that was not so known. 

Q. You mentioned the other day the one thing you did over here which 

had not been done before was take picturee at big social events like 

balls. 

A, Yes. 



Q. What do you mean? What kind of pictures? How did you do that? 

A. When f was, I mean maybe I consider myself still a student bur I was 

already working in Munich. We cavered the faschlng balls and there we 

took a couple of pictures. The people were dressed up pretty for the 

dance and looked their best. Had their hair dune nicely and beautiful 

gowns on the girls and the fellows were in formal clothes too. And here 

the biggest social went in those days was the Beaux Arts Ball. And we 

went tu the people from the Art Associatipn and Mrs. Staab waa the first 

chairman of the Beaw Arts Ball in those years. And when Hans trled to 

sell her the idea that we would come out to the ball on our o w rfsk and 

we would give the Art Association ten percent from our intake, she 

thought it would be a very nice thing to do and we should just try it. 

And we were amazed when we came there with our steady lights, our camera, 

standing up there and the people were really coming to us and we told 

them that we will. have the pictures ready in a week or ten days Qr maybe 

it was two weeks, I don't recall any more because we were quite surprised 

that people came because it was a lot more than I had experienced at any 

of these fasching balls. The people in Springfield went much more for 

that and paid us I think in those days ir was a dollar, 

Q That's what I remember, a dollar a picture. 

A. A dollar a picture and most of them booght two because they were 

only dates. They wanted to have it for the girl and the fellow. I mean 

when they were married couples and then they had had cnough with one 

picture. Rut anyway it was quite a surprise to us and we could give the 

ten percent to the Art Association. We had bought us tickets for this 

affair and both of us as we had come over and we came from a background 

where it was also nothing special to have a real tuxedo, Hans wore a 

tuxedo and I wore a formal and we looked just like the other dancers. 

And nothing unusual about i~ . 

. Did you do this for a number of years? 

A. Yes. I think after this we had during the war they had cancelled 

the Beaux Arts Ball, didn't they? 

Q. There were a few years when they did not have the hall. 

A. Then they didn't have the ball. Rut the moment the ball was again 

we tried to get in to contact again. And we also had bought us a 

membership of the Art Associatfon hecause we thought it was a very nice 

group to help to sponsor. And people who had something to do with the 

arts and we wanted to see what was going on. And so we always belonged 

as members to this group. 

Q. 

You were taking pictures in the sixties I 'm sure at the ball. 

A. Oh, yes, But we E5rst did not have, I mean the big plan was to take 

the Queen of the Deaux Arts Ball. We did not take that at the beginning. 

And I think we also did not take at the beginning the program but later 

on we became better acquainted with rhe chairmen of the later years and 

they asked us to cover the program of the Beaux Arts Ball and some of 



the queens there personally acquainted with US. And we took some of the 

pictures of rhe queens. 

. The queen's choice of photographer was up to her and her family. 

The Art Association as I remember had nothing to do wlth that, really. 

A. Yes. And then later on, I mean like now of course we do all these 

kinds of things in color. And it has become pretty know all over the 

country that this is sometimes, later on we covered proms of high school 

the same way and other parties. 

Q. Did you also do the Symphony Balls when they were started? 

A. We covered the Symphony Ball only once. And found out that was no 

buslness because . . . 

Q. They're not young people perhaps. 

A. ?fhey are not young people. They arc not, it's not mrmch a family 

affair that the Beaux Arts Ball is where tha father likes to take a 

picture with his daughter. Where whole families are together, where the 

girls with their dates are in It, where the grandmother and sometimes 

the grandfather is still around and makes a nice . . . 

(1. LJell the whole family comes to see the child in the ball, 

A. 'he whole family comes to see the child. And at the Symphony Ball 

it's only a couple and nobody is interestd in pictures. I think maybe 

we had covered it twice. Once we had two of our men working there. And 

all they did was standing around and nothing to do. 

). Now you say two of our men. 1 did want to ask you at what p ~ h you t 

were able to expand your business to have some employees. 

A. Now, very soon after the war, my sister-in-law had to quit because 

she expected another baby and couldn't work that much. And we hired us 

a girl from high school, Clare or Cubby Ekrg$chneider. We taught her 

how to retouch and color and she became pretty good at it. And @he 

worked far us all the years nntfl she married and when she married she 

worked from home and did retouching and coloring especfally from home. 

And when she was gone there came up a program that students in high 

school had a special program that they went to high school only in the 

morning hours and could work in certain businaeses. And then we were 

approached. And we mostly had one of these students. Rut then we had 

different people working for us. We had a photographet, DeVora, who 

later on opened up a studio here. That was already in later years. We 

had before we had quite a few of these b~ys who developed, I mean one 

srayecl then on for a year before he did hia military service. One man 

who was a student of Concordfa Seminary and he was a Chinese. Henry 

Wong and he could not go to school for one year and worked for ua 

complete for that one year, And after that pne year he found ovt that 

he had enough money and could go back to school. And at rhat time we 

hired a new young man; rhat is our Jack Jerome who Fs still with us now 

after twenty some years. I mean we had in hatween a lot of different 

people, Some of them became photographers on their own. 


Dorothy Anksr 7 1 

Q. When they came to you rhey knew nothing really about photography, 

did they? You had to teach them. 

A. Yes, we had to teach them. 

Q. 

You didn't at any point hire a professional, another person? 

A. Yes, we had for instance, Tamara; she came from some other place and 

she waS an excellent printer, retoucher. She was really all the way 

around photographer. She must have learned it at some other place. But 

she gave up photography now. And she was with us before we hired I 

think, while we had Henry Wong. 1 mean first she worked only for hours 

and made us prints and then she came and worked for us full time. 

Q. How many employees did you have at any one time7 What was the 

largest nmber? More than one extra employee? 

A. Oh, ja. Ja. We had about three or four employees. But maybe one 

or two were students who came only at certain hours and were not full 

time. 

Q. I presume that thls kind of a profession involves a great degl of 

night work, does it not? 

A. Well the night work really only, I mean we did. 

Q. You did yourself. 

A. We did it ourselves. No, our people we neves employed longer than 

forty hours. 

Q. But did you schedule many appointments- in the evening? 

A. Oh, yes. Yes. 

Q. At the convenience of your customers? 

A, I mean as long as we lived together with the studio, we had the 

hours from morning nine till evening eight every day anyway, But of 

course after five o'clock we went downstairs; there was a little bell on 

the door. We went downstairs. In the year of 1952 we bought the 

building where we are in now on Second and Vine, 1201 South Second. 

Q. What corner of South Grand and Second were you on? Were you on the 

corner which later became Sears Roebuck Building? 

A. No, no. We were on the corner which is now the parking lot of 

Krogers . 

Q. I see. You were on the northeast corner. 

A. Ja. That was a building we only could rent and our landlady never 

wanted to sell us the building. And it was good for us because the 

moment Sears came, the traffic on South Grand was cerrificaLly improving 

to such an extent that our garage which was facing South Grand, we could 

hardly ever get the car out into the street. And South Grand was later 


Dorothy Ankef 72 

on forbidden to park. And it was very hard finding parking on that 

corner and our children still had a nice playground in the back yard. 

We had all the play equ-lpment, swings and there was always a slough of 

kids from the neighborhood aroufid there because we were the ones who h d 

swings. And it was nice for them to play there. 

Q. Than did you buy the house at Second and Vine which is your present 

3 tudio? 

A. Yes, that we bought. 

. And what year was this? 

A. That was in the fall of 1952. 

Q. But did you eves live in this new build.ing? Did you have your 

living quarters here or did you buy your present home at the same t ime? 

A. I)h, yes, our living quarters, Oh, no, we couldn't afford that. I 

mean we had to buy this, as a matter of fact, at the heginntng a9 

contract £or deed because we had to borrow some money from a cough of 

mine that we had enough means hut it still wasn't quite enough, And for 

a few months Prola and his wife lent us enough to be an thia contract 

for deed. But: it only went for maybe ahout six months and then we had 

enough capital in it that we could pay it outright and had only one 

mortgage on it. 

Q. There is a large upstairs in your house. 

A. Oh, ja. We had a larger apartment upstairs. We could have chen the 

kitchen upstairs. Like in the other buildlag we had the ldtchen downstairs 

and we had for each of the children a separate room while in the other 

house the children 11.d -rd large room and we had ooly put a partition in 

between, And here they each had a separate room. We had a very nice 

size living room which had a dining area and then the second room we had 

furnishad us as a bed living room so that way we had actually while the 

children grew up and they were teenagers, we could be in one room and 

they could be in the other room. They could entertah in the one room. 

We had a radio and record player. And in the other one we had the 

television. So these was dff ferent entertainment. And we slept on a 

1 We-+way bed . 

Q. You mentionad your children growing up. During their formative 

years did either one show an interest in photography, in going into your 

business? 

A. No, really not too mch. Rut our son helped us in the darkroom and 

he helped us with many things. He did errands for us, He did during 

the working time he always, he did printing, Be and my nephew also 

helped ue. My nephew was actually more interested in that, than my son 

WRS but L mean of course they were supposed to do things like drying, 

and printing, and mounting, and all these 12ttle things when they worked 

overtime. And we paid them for their efforts. And later on when my 

daughter grew older then she also helped us and sometimes she took some 



of her friends to help us. As a matter of fact she could get with this 

earlier a driver's license. I mean when she was fifteen already this 

limired driver's license for working conveniences which she ltked very 

much. But of course that was only from six to SIX. 

Q. 

But you did give your children cameras, didn't you? 

A. Oh, yes. They had cameras. 

Q. And taught them to take good pictures? 

A. And they knew how to develop but maybe they saw so much of it that 

they dida' t like it. And they saw how hard we had 'to work with it that 

they sometLmes thought that it wasn't--that they could da something more 

profitable with their lives or something different. 

Q. Tell me just a little about your family because we have talked about 

your antecedents but not your descendants. Where is your eon Peter now? 

A. My son is now in the financial world. He is a director with the 

First Boston Company. He is an investment banker. 

Q. 

You and Hans were able to educate your children. 

A. Yes, and they never had to make any debts for their education. 

Q, Where did Peter go to school? 

A. My son graduated from Columbia University and he made master's In 

Warton in finance and banking. 

Q, The Waston School's in Philadelphia, is it not? 

A, Philadelphia, ja, It's the University of Pennsylvania. It's part 

of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Q, h d Peter has children, right? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Two? 

A. He has two sons. 

Q. What are their names? Let's get them on the record. 

A. Phillip is the older one. And Kent. Shall I tell you when they 

were born or how old they are now? 

Q. Well, how old they are now. 

A. Phillip is fifteen now. And Kent is ten now. 

Q. And they live out East, don't they? 



A. Yes. 

Q. Your eon's working in Now York? 

A. My son lives in Darien, Connecticut. 

Q. 

And where did your daughter Carole Jean go to school7 

A. My daughter is a graduate of Indiana University where she made 

bachelor in English and with a teacher certificate. 

Q. I think you and Uans really did such a wanderf~l job to be able to 

establish y~urself, pay off the debts to the people who had helped you 

and then go on to educate these two children the way you did. 

A. Ja, but I mean both of these children did a lot of it on their own 

with going to school because they had . . . . in those days our income 

was maybe too large for them to get scholarshlpa. But they helped 

during the summer months. Our son had for instance started out with a 

paper route and already started to save some money towards his college 

education. And he had worked every summer in high school as well as in 

cnllege and had, like our business is always the poorest at the rime 

when the children went off to school. And very often they had to pay 

the f irst tuition out of thelr own money and then we could f ill it up 

after Christmas that they could use their own money only as their 

spending moncy. And he had worked like a waiter in the two years at 

college. Refore he had worked for Barker-Lubin at the lumberyard and had 

cleaned the apartments and painted the apartments for the Barker-Lubin 

famlly. And our daughter was working when she first started out going to 

school, she had the Idea to become a social worker. And the first year 

in college she had a job in Jacksonville at the . . . 

Q. Mental ins tirution? 

A. At the mental insticutlon. She was only just a little over eighteen 

and became nineteen, And I was surprised how she could manage to bring 

some of these drunks back lnro their home. I mean after this it kind of 

gave her the idea maybe social work isn't quite for her in her line of 

interest. Because we rimer were quite so much for it. And the next 

year she worked for the playground. Remember the playground of 

Springfield. They had children on the school's playground and they 

taught them how to do things in sports and wfth dancFng and with . . . 

A. . . . crafts. 

Q. This was the Playground and Recreation Commission, wasn't it? 

A. This was part of the Playground and Recreation Commission, And that 

gave her a little bit the idea that she wouldn't mind too much In 

becoming a teacher. Especially as she met her now husband at that time 

and he was maybe more of an influence in that way. 



Q. What is Carole Jean's married name? 

A. Carole Jean Sternstein. 

Q. And she' s Mrs. Gerald? 

A. Mrs. Jerry, J-E-R-R-Y. 

Q . J-E-R-R-Y . S-T-E-R-N- S-T- I-£2-N? 

A. NO, E-I-N. 

Q. So it should be Sternsteln in the German, 

A. Ja. Sternstein. It's like the German. 

Q. Where did she meet him, at school? 

A. In school, ja. 

Q. At Indiana7 

A. At Indiana. And they were married before she had gradwted. 

Q. I thought she was young. 

A. Ja, she married after her junior year. 

Q. But she did go on and ger her degree. 

A. Ja, as a matter of fact she made the hest grades after that. 

Q. And I'm sure her parents urged her to finish school, didn't you? 

A. Oh, yes. Ja, ja. We always had said first that black gown before 

she gets the white gown. Rut It didn't work out that way. 

Q. And how many children does she have? 

A. She has a son Matthew. Or better called Matt now who will be 

thirteen in September. And Alexis who was eight in March. 

Q. And she does llve in Springfield, does $he. not? 

A. She lives in Springfield. She is as a matter of fact nQW back in 

teaching again after her children grew up, 

Q. Does she teach at the elementary level or high school? 

A. No, she teaches in the high school level. She teaches in Sacred 

Heart Academy. Mainly sophomores in English. 

Q. In English. Now somewhere along the line you and Hans Left the 

apartment over your studio and bought a home out In the west end of 

Springfield. 



A, Ja, we did that in about the year, when Carole Jean was a junior in 

high school. That was in 1958. 

Q. Do you rent the apartment now over the . . . 

A. Yes, we rented the apartment and that helped us a little bit paying. 

I think we also had to take a second, we had to take a little mortgage 

on the one buildirig. But we could live out there. Meanwhile that whole 

Second Street and South Grand Avenue has become very wuch mwe summercial. 

They had built the big Kropr gtore across the street from us. They had 

Mumrrtert's Drugstore next to us. 

Q. And Sears Roebuck across the street. 

A. Sears Roebuck was already out there. At the beginning when we first 

had moved there, we still had a nice backyard on Second Street. I had 

some nelghbor helping me growing tomatoes. h d we had our easy chairs 

out and we could spend the afternoons in smes just sitting there, But 

all this time has gone and has . . . 

Q. It's really not a residential area any more, is it? 

A. It's no residential. area any more and we had to transform a few 

years ago this backyard into parking because on-street parking on Second 

Street Is only limited to certain hours. And on Vine Street thls doctori6 

office across the street is sornetlmes very busy and doesn't give enough 

parking if we have a whole lot of customers. And our own cars park 

these too and we needed the extra parking facility. 

Q. When you moved into a separate house in the southwest part of town, 

L presume that this cut down on the amount of the you spent in the 

evenings at work, dkd it not? 

A. Yes, we quit the evening hours of the studio. We were only opened 

one evening a week like a Friday evening. And later we even limited 

thts now to only half an hour longer than the other evenings. I mean of 

course we accommodate people if somebody cannot come to any other time, 

we make special appointments at special times because we also close Qn 

Saturdays now at one o'clock. For instance I had to book for just this 

comlng Saturday a sitting after this time because thls man gets married 

and wants to have the pictures taken at the studio, I mean other 

weddings we cover at the places any how, I mean at the church and at the 

rooms, at the places where they have the reception. 

Q. But is most of your work done in the stvdio or is it done out at 

these various functions? 

A. I mean percentagewise most work is done at the studio but of course 

anything architectural has to he taken outside. Anything, all these 

school activities have SO he taken at the school places, the portraits 

of the school we try to rake at the studio but some $choda insist that 

we come also for the portrait work to the schools. 



Q. When do you do a1 1 this school work? Is that in the fall? 

A. Yes, because most schools want to have their pictures, to use them 

as Christmas gifrs. And we take most of them i n the fall and not the 

activltles. T mean some of the activities like football is taken of 

course beforehand. But X inesn something like baseball is of course at: 

the natural time and track is at theit, when the team get together, 

when they have thelr uniforms. And we try to do the activities when our 

people are not as busy like in the months of January, February, March 

because you have to give this as a service to the schools. 

q. You are nor paid by the school for these group picture8 and actlvity 

pictures? 

A. No. 

(1. You make your money from the individual ptctures? 

A. We make the money from the individuals. This is why it fe not such 

a profitable business but it is a more fill in business. 

J. And of course you do have a certain number. I suppose a11 children 

are going to order pictures? 

A. Yes, but in the larger schools you do not get every one of the 

students to come. In the larger schools they sometimas go to other 

places. 

Q4 They don't have to have them all taken than by the official 

photographer as it were? 

A. I mean they try to do that to get a more uniform yearbook but: you 

cannot force everybody to come. There are some people shy of pictures 

and they don't want to spend the money, they don't hme the family. 

There is no way you can force anybody to come. then they come, fine. 

Q. Bur you do makc a very attractive package deal, don't you, to these 

children? 

A. Oh, yes. I mean they get their pictures cheaper than the studio 

portraits because you can take them all in a group. You give them also 

less proofs. But you take these proofs very carefully, that they have a 

very nice choice among the six poses they get. Nowadays aa it is modern 

ro take things like double exposires we do that. And we have backgrounds 

with more interest group like for boys we have a background with more 

studious, like home affair we have some greeneries, we have some trees, 

we hava what we call environmental backgrounds, And of course we give 

them a chance to take some pictures in full lengths or three quarter 

lengths or some ltke just head and bust picturas. F'or the yearbook it 

is such they should only use the head and bust pictures to make ir: more 

uniforni in rhe yearbook. 

Q. The children today all want these little tiny wallet size pictures, 

do they not? 



A. Ja. 

Q. More of those. 

A. That's what they want to exchange with each other. And they also 

need than for certain applications, I mean when they apply for schools 

or for jobs they ever so often have to send . . . 

Q. And for scholarships. 

A, And scholarships, they have to @end a picture along with it. That's 

why I ever so often tell them not to give them all out to friends but 

that way you get some reorders at some time. 

Q. Along with your school business, your society business, do you also 

do passport portraits? 

A. Ja, ja, And we do now these instant passports too. The color there 

you can only get the two passport pictures instead of the black and 

white passport where we have the negative and can print you as many 

print# as you need like. 

Q. This is a Polaroid. 

A. That's a Polaroid passport. 

Q. 

I didn't know colored photographs were acceptable on paesports. 

A. Oh, yes. Since about three years or so we do that. 

9. Looking at tha picture of photography in a broad sense in 

Springfield, what's happening to it today? 

EN0 OF TAPE 

Q. Dorothy, when we finished taping a week ago, I was asklng you what 

you thought about the status of professional photography in Springfield 

today. Has it changed much slnce the time you came here? 

A. Maybe countwise we may have the same amount of competitors but the 

structure has changed a little bit. We had at that the more the eolid 

photographers. There was somethes a man sometimes a woman who headed it 

and there was one studio which had studios in some of the Illiaois 

cities close by* I meant Rurchett for instance but they only had one 

place here in town and had their finishing in Peoria where they had the 

largest place and from there they had developed. It had still existed, 

there was the big coupon sale that people went around and sold you a 

coupon. This was also a cut rate affair. You could buy very cheaply 

and some people sold them from door to door. And that made the people 

come in to the ~tudios. This kind of salesmanship wa in the Anker 

Studio have never followed up. We never had anything like a coupon. We 

had maybe sometimes a special but that was always to cover our initial 

expenses and go ahead with it. 



Q. Did you advertise your apecials in the newspaper? 

A. Yes, but that came at a later date when we came out with the first 

electro-flash unit and worked that for our children's photography. 

Actually when we started out we were very much specialized in children's 

photography. We even had something like a child of the week and had 

that especially photographed. That brought us quire a lot of children's 

photography. Now, children's photography has changed very, very much. 

Because you have these big outfits, these big national outfirs which go 

to the grocery stores, go to the department stores for a faw days and do 

it for a very unheard of sum of pennies rather to pay for the picture 

but when you come and see your picture, see your proofs, you are kind of 

forced into htiying a regular order because only that way the firm can 

come to their costs and can make the thing ecoaomical. Rut these things 

had only existed then sometimes in hotel rooms; some of the out of town 

people came in here far a bit and did this kind of thing. While now we 

have some studios, like Pennys, has such a steady studio set up here in 

town and in White Oaks is one of these outfits. And it killed the 

regular children's business that our bread and butter photographers have 

very little children coming in. However occasionally and before Fbristmas 

you find grandparents who have their grandchildren in town and they know 

that they get reliable service with people like us and we take spacial 

care especially if the child is a little bit more difficult, And we 

also take pets which are still more difficult than children to photograph. 

And it affords quite a blt of patience. And we give the people more 

choice of proofs than they get in these cheap outfits. 

Q. Do you have many cummissions to do pets? 

A, Occasionally. You saw just out there a horse that was 3u8t taken 

last week; that Was one of the black, it was taken both ways, in black 

and white and in color. The color prints are still out but the black 

and white were a little bit in a rush. They needed it for some type of 

publicity, It w a ~ a special four, what is it? How do you call these 

horses? I'm dot familiar. 

Q. Quarter horse? 

A. Quarter horse, ja. Had something-I mean this we take much less. 

We have more often dogs or cats. Sometimes we take the dogs and cats 

with their owners together or sometimes we take them separately. But we 

al-ways try to leave us a lot of time because an animal i~ much more 

nervous when they come to a studio than a person. You sometima8 work, 

need a lot of patience. But we always had someone of our photographers 

here who was very specialized in and loved pets very much. It was not 

me. 

Q. It was not you. 

A. And they could do especially well with pets, But I think we came 

away from our original type of photography. Now, we have alway~ in a 

city like Springfield, we took any kind. 1 mean like you saw in front 

some development of buildings that we followed up from the dug out to 

the very finish in different stages, things WE do for the architect's 



purpose that he sees exactly what kind of material goes in and he sees 

the technical aspect and he can always rely oa them if ever they have a 

claim that he used 90 many 2 x 4's and that much steel and that much 

concrete. Because only while you are building you can see it. When 

it's all covered up and finished, it's not possible to be seen anymore. 

Q. What were some of the buildings you have done recently in that 

fashion? 

A. I mean you still saw the shots of the Lincoln Library downstairs 

which they had put up as a little model for It. We had the Sears 

Building in White Oaks and I think we are now on some--oh, they had 

this, that was even much more recent out on the--it's the side road from 

the bypass, [Route] 55, where they build such an educational building 

for . . . (tape shut off) 

Q. Yes, rhat was the Special Education Development Building that you 

were mentioning when we shut the tape off. And I would like to interrupt 

here just for a minute to say that we are taping this in the Anker 

Studio and the interviewer has just had a tour and seen many things 

which are absolutely Greek to her. But which I hope to some extent Mrs. 

Dorothy Anker will explain to you. Perhaps you'd like to tell us how 

pha tography has changed In the use of equipment and the new developments 

in film, 

A, Now since a few years you are much more automated in your taking of 

pictures. We have cameras which let us take the 70 mlllimetes film and 

we take especially for school photography. It has a little identification 

slip on it that we can very easy identify, The portrait which we have 

taken by number and we have then the names on it and we can take a lot 

of sittings. I'm not quite familiar, I mean I think mostly we can rake 

about forty, fifty different portrait sittings on six to eight exposures 

each on this fflm, And it goes a lot faster than when in former times 

we had to change ffve by seven holders where you only could have four 

exposures, two on each side in three by five 91ze film. The film size 

is practically the same. And of course with the color photography this 

$8 a much Easter way of handling it. And as a matter of fact the color 

photography we do not even finish here because there are people who do 

this as their specialization. Labs which are only outfitted for color 

and we have found rhat it is for us a much more lucrative way just to 

take the pictures and send them to that. That means we have very high 

bills when we are busy but In the quiet times like right now in July 

when we do not have that many sittings we don't have the fixed overhead 

to carry. 

Q. Where do you eend them ro be developed, your color film? 

A. We work with mainly two different labs. One is in Kansas City and 

the other one is Bloomington, Illinois. 

Q. 

Do the majority of people want color photagraphs now? 

A. Yes. I mean of course if you take a ptcture for the newspaper, the 

black and white is still all right. But we are capable of making a 



black and white print from a color negative. But If people wanted very 

much in a hurry, which is mostly the case in such a press photograph and 

they need it right away, the next day or the second next day, as we do 

not do our own processing we have to take it in black and white and 

these is still some black and white necessary because many people come 

for publicity sittings. 

Q. Then you really do not have as much developing to do as you used to, 

do you? 

A. Oh, no. We can work wlth less people here at the studio because the 

brunt of the burden is taken away from us. A11 we have to do is take 

the picture and do the little job of sending it to the lab and getting 

it back. We still do the retouching. The girl you met here, Maxine 

Hopwood, Is an excellent retoucher. And she does most of our own 

retouching and when the prints come back then there is spotting to do 

occasionally. And that finishing she does also. But of course it's 

much less than what we used to do when we had the black and white 

photography and did hand oil coloring which we did for so many years. 

We still do it and . . . (tape turned off) 

Q. I turned that off when Maxine brought in Rome examples of the kind 

05 work you do here. We've been talking about che fact that you send 

out your color film to be developed in laboratories, But you also make 

colored pictures by, I don't know what you call It. 

A. I mean these are hand oil colored pictures that used to be the way 

we didn't kdow it in Europe. But we saw it the moment we came here. And 

in those, the first times I bought me such a color set and read in it 

that it is better to have your pictures brow toned before you, or sepia 

toned + whatever you call it, before you use them. 

Q. 

Now what were these colors, Dorothy, oil, water color? 

A. No, they are a transparent oil color, 

Q. 

Do they come in tubes or sticks? 

A. They came in little tubes and you mix them up ta certain things. 

It works 

You mostly start out wlth the neutral over the whole surface. 

better and works more smoothly. Then In later years you've got wen 

more ready flesh colors. At the beginning I had to mix me my fleeh 

colors from different colors. Later on we got an ourfit where the 

supplier had these ready flesh colors and it got a little bit more 

mechanical . And of course I know basically how to retouch so I knew 

where the high points on the cheek bones are, the structure of the face, 

how you put in the shades. 

Q. 

Well, you really, you' re doing an oil portrait almost. 

A. Yes, but it isn't quite that, You have the outlims there. When 

you paint you make yourself your outlines, you have to draw your 

outlines. But here you have the outlines there to begin with. 



Q. And you have the expression, don't you, on the face? 

A. And you have the expression, ja. But you should be careful that you 

don't cwer up the expression with too much lipstick or with too much 

color. Because that you can do too. And it is sometimes very hectic if 

a man has six colors in his tie and you have to be very correct to bring 

them out exactly. We always ask if something, if one piece of clothing, 

if a woman wears a printed dress with six different cglors or eight 

different colors, then it Is very hard and you have to be kind of 

particular to get these things out right. 

Q. Then do you ask the woman to leave her dress with you so she can . . 

A. Then she has to leave the dress otherwise we cannot be as correct. 

Q, You can follow it. 

A. Right now we do these things just like Maxine Bopwood showed you 

more or less for copies only. I mean it was very hard for instance for 

us. We had to do family groups where each person was relatively small 

and we had to color each one into rhat group. 

Q. When did you start doing this, do you remember how long ago? 

A. I started right out I think In 1940 because I remember the first 

pictures I could still send to my parents in Germany before the war had 

started and they were pictures of my son and my nephew. And they were 

delighted to get that. We still have their seacrion on it. That I 

remember very vividly- And of course I had done it for customers before. 

But this, had I ever mentioned that my sister-in-law had helped us? 

Q. Yes. 

A. And she developed a very nice way of dolng that colortng and did it 

much . . . 

Q. You said she was very good at retouching. 

A, She was very good in those things. After she didn't work far us any 

more we had that young lady who came rfght from high school to us, Clara 

Bergschneider in those days. She's now Mrs. Earp for many years. And 

after &he became Mrs. Earp she worked from her home and did us a lot of 

this coloring and she perfected it. Because we could develop our high 

school business in the very early years, We had our first htgh schools 

I think in 1941. And then the high schools always had a package where 

there was at least one if not more oil colored plctures among them. And 

we needed that. And In some cases they had a lot of them. I mean this 

always needed a multitude of colored pictures. And we needed during the 

Christmas season more hands than we had available in our om studio to 

put this all out. 



Q. 

This was very, very the consumtng, wasnt t it, to do this color work? 

A. Ja. But I mean when you do this you can develop a certain routine 

and can maybe color so and so many. Half at once. I mean you may make 

the basic@ of the faces, maybe you had four or five prints in front of 

you and go from one to the other. 

Q. With one color? 

A. With one color. And that way you can work a lot faster as if you 

just do a single. And like I mentioned befora a family group where you 

had five, six people in and had to do each individual, ysu can do at the 

same time much easier, larger heads and just the head and shoulder 

portraits. 

Q. You mentioned a minute ago that much of your work today is making 

copies of old pictures. 

A, I mean we all knew how the famous book of Roots came about and since 

then every good American family has discovered their ancestors and with 

it some old pictures from the closets, or the drawers, and they bring 

them a lot of them. Some of them are gometimes very dilapidated. Maybe 

I ran even show you here one she is working on which had a lot of, was 

tattered and torn. And she does a beauriful job. 

Q. Then you first have to restore the picture. 

A. No, first we take a regular photo of, which is a copy, of the picture. 

And wlrh that negative, at the negative we can do scrme retouching already. 

Maybe we can interrupt here for a moment and I can show you how you do 

negative retouching. 

Q. Why don't we wait until we're through and then I'll look at that 

because that's a part of your . . 

A. Now you do part of it in the negative. Everything what is dark in 

the negative is light in the print or vice versa. So if you have too 

many light spots you have to darken them. And if you have too many 

light spots you have to etch. I mean the darkening, make it dark you do 

with a pencil ~ n d sometimes when it's too much you have to do it with 

paint* And the light and If you have something dark An the negative to 

make it lighter, you have to use the etchtng knife. But those are 

things that every photographer knows. And I took it maybe more for 

granted but that of course maybe it's interesting for some people outside 

the trade to learn. 

. And that you do with your negative, when you're working with the 

negative. 

A. That we do with the negative but we cannot do everything with the 

negative because you have to use a technique and it covers only 90 and 

90 much and especially in a very destroyed old copy there is sometimes 

much too much to do and you cannot do that all in the negative. And you 

have to do a certain amount in the positive prinr. But we do a lot of 



these things now. During the quieter time we can be at a faster 

delivery of these things than when we are at tho real busy time. Then 

we sometimes ask the people to wait a little longer. And it depends how 

much work is involved. These is some copy which you can use straight 

copy. They just want than for other members of the family and it is 

fine. But when we have to do a lot of restoring it takes that much 

longer. 

Q. Oh, 1'm sure it does. What do you congider your quiet time? 

A. This is right now. 

Q. The middle of summer. 

A, The middle of summer, ja. 

Q, But there seemed to me to be more weddings in the late summer than 

these used to be. We used to say June was the month of brides. 

A, That is right. But many people prefer now the Labor Day weekend 

which makes a nice family get-together and it Is already cooler . . . 

Q. So your business pFcks up earlier. 

A. . . . workwfse that works for the particular bride. 1 mean actually 

the months of August is much more filled with us for weddings, with 

wedding appointments already. Bur it's mostly equal, the months of June 

and the months of August. Now we have them all year round. 

Q. You showed me some very 1"ovely pictures of brides taken outdoors. 

Do you do much outdoor work with individuals wlth portraits? 

A. Yes. If the situation permits it. Rut you all know our weather in 

Springfield. We only have a few very blessed days. We have it elthes 

too cold or too hot or too rainy and too humid. And it. ig so~netimas a 

hardship to do an outside picture. We'd like to lnclade at least in 

every wedding some outdoor shots especially if they have the reception 

like somewhere in the park, We even had in the rose garden of the Rees, 

we had a full wedding ceremony once at the Rees Carillon because it 

makes a nice background. We use the outdoors of the church gardens in 

some surrouadlng small cities. I mean the parks have nice, Lincoln Park 

has a nice reception hall and has nice trees, We have done things at 

homes around the lake area. The Lake Shore Club has a nice surrounding. 

The Illini Country Club has a nice surrounding. But of course If it's 

night time then it's more the candlelight ceremony which goes with it 

than the outdoors. But we take family groups outside. We take single 

portraits outside either in their home gardens or at the park. And if 

this is not possible thee we brought the outside insIde and have some 

environmental backgrounds. We have some plants here. We have some 

backgrounds which look like a home study here. 

Q. I was very interested in the different types of background that you 

showed me, different colors, I had not known until recently that black 

was used as a background in portraits but I see you can make an all 

black backgromd. 


A. Oh, yes. It' s very attractive for someone with blondish hair, makes 

I a lovely contrast and is very much liked. 

I q. You had also a dark blue as I remember and you used different colors 

I and a variegated background. 

1 A. Oh, ja. Since color photography is there people want to see certain 

1 colors and I mean like for the school photagraphy for the school yearbook, 

I they want to have a more uniform background for certain shots. Rut we 

I allow in our school work always some shots fox the individual where we 

I 

I ahow more figure and show some of their chosen backgrounds with it, 

I 

Q. When you came here and started taking pictures did you always use a 

1 whitebackgtoundinthosedays? 

A. No, this blue background photographs very nicely dark. I think 

something like this, like you see it here, that I mean you can color it 

any color which would be matching. I mean when we used the black and 

white background. That's one of our oldest. We had that and on the 

other aide of it was the white. The white we did not use as much because 

it was then very fashionable to have like a little halo around sometimes 

only la the background tn a certain, to give a pointed light and to give 

a lot of light on the top of the hair. Of course people who do not have 

' 

any hair you have to light definitely differently. Because you always 

want to get the most flattering way for a per6on because nobody is as 

sensitive than with their own looks. 

Q. Of course, and that's where your artistry and your skill comes into 

play ta try and get the most flattering portrait you can. 

i 

A. Yes, we certainly try all the time. I mean our success in business 

has shown that there was more success than meal in it. But of course 

sometimes you cannot please everybody every time all the time. It isn't 

always quite possible. 

I Q. It must be very difficult to work with a person who is very self 

I conscious. 

I A. Yes. 

i 

Qh Doesn't it? When people are very conscious and stiff and don't seem 

to know how to relax. How on earth do you manage to get a natural 

looking portrait? 

A. A little conversation beforehand and trying to find a certain topic 

which would interest them and a little diplomacy, little psychology. 

I Q. Then snap them when they're unaware. 

A. You have to get them. Like children too they are sometimes a little 

bit afraid. They identify us with the doccor's office and we have toys 

here ro attract them, balls. And can play where we can, when they are 

young enough to play the famous peek-a-boo and to catch their best 

expressions. Because that's all what goes with it. With children we 



very often work two people together that one plays with the child and 

the other one gets the pictures snapped at the time. Then the 

expression is right. 

Q. Speaking of old things, when you were taking me on a tour of your 

darkroom, you showed me several things, pieces of equipment that you had 

brought from Germany wfth you. Are you still ushg them? 

A. Occasionally. I mean we have still an old printer which is used and 

then an eight x ten printer which we used because there are 62111 8 lot 

of things which we have to shoot on a original eight x ten like these 

architectural shots. In order to make them right for the architects we 

use eight x ten negatives. This is why we have to be more expensive than 

some people who m e a small negative but you can be more correct In your 

technical experiences. Especially when you have to imprint all this 

statistics of the plcrure which was taken that you make a second negative 

and then imprint it with a print where you can write all the detalls of 

this particular, of the data on it and the angle from which it was 

taken, and so on what is required In thew architectural development 

shots. 

Q Haw did you bring these pieces of equipment over with you because 

they're fairly large? 

A. Ja, I had two great boxes. And those were the heaviest pieces I had 

along. This is why I didn't bring very much of my own belongings from my 

own household because I had those things in. I had then a enlarger too 

and I had s camera. But we found out that that camera was not too useful 

to us, In the beginning I took pictures with it. But the first thJng 1 

had to get me right away was a five x seven background camera and I had 

to get rid of my hard acquired lenses for the Leica which I liked so 

much. Because otherwise we didn't have the means to buy these things 

and this is where I had a nice wide angle and I had a ntce telescope 

lens, And I could not use that, I could not keep that because It was 

more for my own pleasure. Nowadays it would probably h&v~ been nice 

because some architectural shots you could take on 35 millimeter. 

in those days our business did not develop in that tine but it was 

But 

strictly portraits. And then we started out with the schools and had 

this kind of development. 

Q. Did you think when you left Germany that perhaps photography might 

become your life's work? 

A. I mean only mine and not for Hans. I never thought it would be that 

way. Because I had a lot of confidence that he would kind of take care 

of me. Rut when people recommended us to do this then it juat came 

about. 

Q. It just naturally developed once you started, did it not? 

A. Naturally developed and we could from the first yeas of the thousand 

dollars we could, what is it? I mean it was all, the whole full sales. 


' Dorothy Anker 

I 

Q. Oh, your gross? The first year was a thousand dollars. 

A. Our gross of a thousand dollars and we could develop. When my 

sister-in-law was with us I ranember we once went down to the Leland 

Hotel, then we could celebrate that we had done ten thousand dollars 

worth of gross. 

1 Q. That was a great deal. Was that after the war or during? 

I I A. But of course things got better, we had that increased manyfold. 

Q. Well I think perhaps when you left Germany you had no idea of the 

limitations that might surround Hans in having a career in hcrlca. You 

were enemy aliens during the war which certainly restricted his chances, 

his opportunities to develop a business of his own or to get in another 

business. A11 this was very unknown to you when you left Germany, what 

it would be like. 

A. Oh, yes, definitely. Actually photography here was a little bit 

more lucrative than I had seen it in Germany. In Germany the man who 

employed me in Munich for instance. He was such a big shot photographer 

but he had to have hls studio only together with his living places. And 

he could not pay us anything. He used us as employees with no salary. 

And that did not look so good. I mean here we had to employ people, we 

had t~ pay them salaries, we had to make a living for ourselve8, And 

this school photography, we had enough business all year around that we 

could develop such a business where this was given to us. But we could 

get e~ough out of it that we could, with the years acquire to pay for a 

building like this one here where we are now. 

i Q. Which is very adequate. 

I 

A, And we could live upstalrs where we had a nice family apartment. 

And downstairs we had the business. And it was maybe a little bit 

better here than 1 had seen it in Europe at the time. It's possible, I 

mean maybe with the war years also a certairi sentimentality developed 

that people were more picture conscious, and use this. (rape turned 

off) 

Q. Do you have the feeling, Dorothy, that Hens was happy in this 

business after fr developed the way it did? 

A. Yes, It was his own business and he was not really the person who 

would have liked to work for somebody else. Like some people are very 

happy to be employees all their lifes. But in a way I always thought 

this was a good chance. Re could do his own thing. 

1 

I Q. He could be independent. 

A. Be could be independent. And it gave h h a certain esteem of his 

own life. He liked taking pictures, he liked to run around and to be 

known as Hans Anker the photographer. 


Dora thy Ankcr 

Q. Did he learn as much about the technique of photography as you? 

A. Oh, yes. You see we have these conventions which are very 

instructive for us. They are kind of schooling. f mean there are the 

Illinois conv~ntions and there are the national conventions. And we 

attended a great lot of them. You learned a lor of the techniques. How 

to take pictures. You get your professional magazines where you can 

learn. And he was always eager to pick up new things. And of course at 

those conventions you also have the trade shows where you see what is 

new, what you can buy, and what they want to sell you. And we try to be 

up to date with more modern equipment and with modern ways of technology 

and because during the years photography has done a lot of development. 

I remember when we graduated from our school way back in 1932. Then 

even our principal of the school had told us there are many, many ways 

you can develop into color photography and into things and during our 

lifetime we have seen this happening, And I'a sure it will never stand 

stlll. There will be more new methods like television has shown us 

quite a different development which we did not how in those early years 

at all. I mean we were just starting to get acquainted with radio and 

the electronics now have given a tremendous development. And it is more 

communication than just still photography which will bring the way to 

more photographic development than we have seen it so far. 

Q. With all these new and improved techniquee and methods, is the 

business becoming more lucrative or are the expenses so high? (tape 

turned off) In other words is it harder or easier to make a living with 

the new methods and new devices? 

A. I don't know. 

Q. New film. 

A. It always has been n kind of a hard living became I mean it is 

still a penny pincherst world. Ir's not lika figuring this big sms. 


Q. You were saying when the first aide ended that your ssn talked i n 

numbers you could hardly comprehend. 

A. Ja. I was also used to such kind of numbers from the wprld of my 

father. But this here is a s m ~ lbusiness l and a much more individual 

business but you do not have to starve in it when you are working, Ir 

can give you a pretty nice living. 

you do not have to starve with it. 

Nothing huge and nothing large but 

Q. You have told me so much about photography and we have not talked 

too much about the things that Dorothy Anker has dane in this community. 

I know that you have been very involved and you jotted dom a few things 

which I use as guide posts but I will just simply ask you when you first 

began to be involved in ccmmunity things as a volunteer. 



A. Very early. I think the first year someone asked me to teach at the 

YMCA [Young Men's Christian Assocation] where they just had started a 

little darkroom and they wanted to have some instructloo. And I could 

donate my time and have a class. This I had nearly forptten because 

it's 90 long ago. But a few years ago somebody approached me and said, 

"Oh, aren't you the Dorothy Anker who taught then and there?" Because 

it felt it was su long, so very, very long ago that I hardly remember 

it. And in a few years later, quite a few years later, I tried a class 

at the Boy's Club. It was not too successful. I showed than a few 

little tricks how to develop but they were kind of giggly add didnvt 

feel serious enough so I think we never got over three or faur classes. 

And that was just teaching photography. But we always tried to do 

things. Like when I was young I helped to collect for the Community 

Fund, wlth my little girl, went around in the neighborhood because I 

always thought the Community Fund is ~omething very wo~thwh~le. And I 

used to work as a collector and a block wardm and so on. Rut never got 

too high up in the ranks because it mostly came at the time when I was a 

little too husy. 

Q. You also were involved I understand with Boy Scouts. 

A. Ja. Thar was the beginning of Boy Scouts, the Cub Scouts* When my 

son was about eight or nine they had a little group. No one of the 

mothers wanted to take It. So here was one mother who didn't have too 

much the but we had a basement and had one room which we could dedicate 

to that. And my son who tried to work already in woodwork in th~ss: days 

had to give me a lot of help because I didn't know much about it. 

Q. You mean your eight or nine year old son was already . . . 

A. Ja, he helped me. He knew better and that we could carve out and 

make some bookends for Christmas for the parents and could do sonething, 

And I also had a bigger boy as a matter of fact helping me to play 

baseball wlth the little boys nhich was very helpful because I had no 

idea of baseball - This was a very unfamiliar sport to me. Our ~chlag 

ball in Germany which we had played as children was kind of stmiliar but 

with different rules and so this was abbeolutely unfamiliar and that was 

nice that I had that. And he played then. 

Q. Was he an older Boy Scout? 

A, He was an older Boy Scout and he gave his time, 

Q. Did you have no other den mother to help you? Did you do this all 

by yourself? 

A. I did this by myself. It was the Flrst Methodist Church who 

sponsored this group. And once a month we had. a Cub Scout meeting of 

the whole bigger group of Cub Scouts and I learned a little bit in these 

meetings, how the other people did it. 

Q. How many Cub Scouts did you have in this group? 



A. I believe we had about, it fluctuated a little bit. We had eight. 

Q. But you also had a little baby daughter at that the, didn't you? 

A, Ja, she was kind of a little nuisance sometimes because she thought 

it was exciting when those boys came and it made it pretty lively. 

Q. So she came to all the meetings? 

A. No, 00, She didn't come to the meetings. I think I had a 

babysitter for her for that particular day because otherwise she would 

have been roo much of a nuisance. 

Q, How long did you stay with the Cub Scouts? 

A. At 1emt three quarters of the year, something like that. 

Q. 

I think you were very noble. 

A. Later on someone else took it over. 

Q. I know that y~u've always had an interest in music and so did Hans. 

You were fairly early, I presume, affiliated in some way with the 

Springfield Symphony? 

A. Yes, Hans was asked to join the Symphony Association, the Board of 

the Symphony Association maybe, I don't know, at least twenty, twenty-one 

or two years ago. Just after Farbman had came . . , 

Q. As a conductor. 

A. . . . to the city so it might even be lon$er because Farbman was 

with us now for twenty-five years. 

Q. And he celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary a year ago. 

A. Ja, anniversay with us. That's right. So it may have been nearly 

that long because he was pretty new with ue when he joined. And at the 

same time Eileen Ensel was the president of the women's group and she 

asked me if X wouldn' t join. And I thought that was nice arsd very much 

worthwhile. You did some of the continuation of the work of the symphony. 

You worked for the ball. And the only office I had with them once was 

treasmer because I still was much too occupied with my profession and 

my family that I had so much leisure time. Besides I always had certain 

conflicts. 1 mean with doing secretarial work I was afraid I did too 

many mistakes in my English, in writing it down. 

Q. You probably didn't make any more than those of us who have spoken 

English all out lives. 

A. I don't know. But anyway that was alwaye something hard. And 1 

didn't think that I was well enough educated for any real leaderehip 

like being president. I rather always left that to the rest of my 

family who had, I mean like Hans who , . . 



Q, He did becane president of the symphony, did he not? 

A. He did become president and he even took it in two different terms 

because after he had ffnished his first year, they had just changed the 

rules that each president should only be in for a year, And they had a 

vice-president already selected and the vice-president took it over 

then. But they re-elected him president the following year which he 

kind of hesitantly accepted but he got then the vice-president of his 

choice, namely young Jim Graham. And that way he thought he could carry 

on and he could find for himself a follower in that job right away and 

also rejuvenate the whole board with this young addition on the board. 

Q. Had he been on the board all those years since he first went on? 

A. Yes, he always, he has been always on it. And he liked it very 

much. He very much felt honored that people had selected him. And we 

developed a great friendship with Harry Farbman which even dated . , . 

(tape turned off) 

Q. You mentioned something about having been involved with the Youth 

Symphony. What was that? 

A. Yes. The Youth Symphony which now has a very fancy name, Sangwon 

Val ley, what do they call themselves? 

Q. I don't know. 

A. They had, I mean the Youth Symphony came to Life a few years ago. 

That meant children who were interested in playing a instrument and it 

is headed now by a member of our symphony. The violin player. 

Q. Not Harriet Montgomery? 

A. No, no. 

Q. Well, we'll add that to the transcript. [Elizabeth Ricketts] 

A, Young woman. Here's something with the symphony. Ja, but this will 

not mention the--this is only an advertisfng, I mean they don't have 

that program. They wouldn' t mention her, 

Q. We'll add that as a footnote to your transcript then it is transcribed. 

A. She heads it now. h d Hans could do something very nice for 5t. He 

could see that they had a steady income. 

Q. Did this come from the symphony? 

A. No, no. It didn't come from the symphony. But gome lady in her 

will had left some money which she wanted as a kind o* developed thing. 

And they could direct that to developing of the youth eymphony. Because 

anythlng with music is always terribly expensive. I mean the music 

sheets alone and wen if you have a small symphony, just the music 

sheets you need for all the instruments are terribly expensive. 1 mean 


Dorothy Aaker 92 

I was flabbergasted when one evening Harry Farbman told us just to put 

up the symphony it cosrs alone about two thousaud dollars for the 

symphony to have the sheet music for a symphony, 

Q. That is amazing. 

A. Because you need that many copies for each member and this 2a why 

they sometimes perform the sme symphony again. Firgt of all, it was 

already studied and they have already the material, 

Q. Did your interest in the local musical organization stem from the 

fact that you love and appreciate music done or do you play an instrument? 

A. No, I have to say that I, myself have only played for very few 

years. I had a father who was very talented at the plano and he had 

worked for It all his life. Because he studied as a student very 

ambitiously and couldn't see that I did not study. I rather liked some 

sports. And he said, "This is nothing you have to do so If you don't 

want to, leave it go .I1 And I felt very happy about it which maybe I 

later on regretted but I never took it back up. Hans studied for many 

more years and he was much more achieved at the piano. He played with 

his mother four-handed certain pieces. Not only Chop Sticks but a 

little better, duets. And I mean two people at the piano. And he dPd a 

much nicer job, But when he married me and he saw how well my father 

was achieved on the piano he also got a complex and hardly ever sat down 

anymore to play anything. 

Q. You didn't play in your later years then? 

A. No, we didn't play. We played records very well, And rhey became 

better and better. 

Q. Well, that's the way we ],earn to appreciate masic is through records, 

A. As a matter of fact we had a record player I think in our house 

before we had a refrigerator. That seemed to be more important. We got 

the refrigerator later. 

Q. You have jotted down here the fact that you were on the Oratorio 

Board. 

A. Hans was on that just before the very end, I mean, I think all he 

could attend was me meeting. 

Q. That 1s a new organization. 

A. That is a new organization. Hella Holman beads it. And the 

Brissendens were on it. And he enjoyed going there but all he could 

attend was one meeting and then he became sick. 

Q. I'm sure that you must have also been involved in work wlth the 

temple, the Jewish temple. 


Dorothy Anke r 93 

A. Oh, yes. I mean I was involved with the Sisterhood of the temple. 

I always thought that that was a very worthwhile organization. They had 

given us socially help when we came and my children $rew up there, They 

went to Sunday School and Sisterhood always helped in every auspices. I 

had probably every job which Sisterhood supplies. I never took zhe 

presidency, I was vice-president for a few times. I left thoee things 

to my daughter. She took over the presidency for two years and everybody 

was delighted and made me many compliments the way she handled it. 

Because I think she was one of the pretty proficient presidents we had. 

Q. I nate you were also involved wlth something called R.S.V.P. And I 

don't how what that is. 

A. Now this is ~ans' activity. He wa8 in the last two, three years he 

was very involved with the senior citfzens and was at the Advisory Board 

of the Senior Citizens. And R.S.V.P. stands for Retired Senior . . . 

Q. P is probably persons or people. 

A. Ja, people. Rut I mean it's something of Sangamon County, It is 

the group which tried to entertain these seniors in a way, like, under 

them are the volunteers. Volunteers. Like they function at, one of 

their nice functions is that they have the classes f ~ seniors r in driving 

lessons. And they have a lot of volunteers. More the entertaznlng, the 

volunteer entertaining groups like they do handicrafts and they do , , . 

Q. Do they work through the Senior Citizens Center? 

A. Yes, at the Senior Citizens. And this group Hans chaired just for a 

couple of years. 

Q, Was he presldenc of the Senior Citizens or this R.S.V.P,? 

A. No, of this R.S.V.P. he was. Be was asked to become the president 

of the Senior Citizens. Bur we had plans that we wanted to spend the 

winter, part of the winter away and he didn't figure that it was fair 

enough that he should take the whole job. Rut he couldn't really and 

that's why he declined. But in this R.S.V.P. they had a big change of, 

I mean, there was always one person there who gets paid from the 

organization who heads it. And this manager had quit and they had to 

take the new one, And there was a lot of tr~uble with the new one 

because this unfortunate soul had an accident right after she started 

working and was pretty helpless. And Hans did a lot of ice things for 

her that she could stay in the job and the job be kept for her because 

she apparently is trying to do a very nice job Mth the organization. 

Q. It's quire obvious that you've done a great deal for this community. 

1'm sure you probably felt somewhat of an obligation to become involved 

in these things. 

A. JR, I mean the community has been very nice to us. They helped us 

to make a living because we made it out of the Anker Studio where we 

were among the community and we thought we should put back maybe a 

little of our om efforts. 



Q. Not everyone fee19 that way and St's very commendable. 

A. Ja, but thar was the way we were kind of brou$ht up. Because hack 

home in Germany my parents had the same philosophy and so had my in-laws. 

My mother-in-law was a big shot at their Red Cross, And ray mother did a 

lot of nice things for some children who wme deaf irnd we had a big 

institution and they had come from a different country, from Lithuania. 

hnd she saw that their livelihood was always taken rare of. Aad my 

mother was on a community fund group for years. And my father was in 

everything cmmercial enterprises. 1 mean, what was it, cmmitteea. He 

headed a lot of committees and did thar because in their later years 

when they had enough people to do the work of the business he could 

afford a little more leisure and could do things. And he always felt 

patriotic enough to do this until the Nazfs came and thought that we as 

Jews had no rights to work for groups like that. 

Q. Despite all your involvement and the fact that you and Hans ware 

running a very successful business, in the later years you did find time 

to do some things for yourselves. And I know that Hans took a good many 

courses at Sangamon State University. Did you also go to school? 

A. Yes. We were especially Intrigued by some of the teachers. We 

always enjoyed history and Hans even took it upon himself to write in 

one of those courses, a very nice history of our own Irrmigration. And 

wrote it in view of our grandchildren that they would know something 

about our past and how WE came to this country and how everything kind 

of developed towards the place we had found here, Because in this group 

among the co-students he saw many of the young students who had no way, 

I mean they knew just vaguely where their family came from add that 

there ever was an important life golng on ahead of time. And he thought 

this would be nice and our grandchildren live to a ripa old age and 

maybe they have grandchildren again and this way we can pass down 

something in the history of our family life. 

Q, And he did this for one of his coarses. 

A. He did this for one of the courses. Ja. That was Chris Breiserh's 

course. And I, myself, enjoyed very much with him tagether a history 

course which Chris Breiseth had given too. That was Contemporary History, 

the development out of the, from the beginning of the eighteenth century 

on up to the present time which taught me a little bit how to read a 

newspaper and not only society and theatre pages. 

Q. This is the course where you worked with the Nee Yotk Times, is it 

not? 

A. Ja, where we used the New York Times as one. of our textbooks, 

Q. Have you nor also taken some art courses? 

A. Yes. I mean as a matter of fact, the very first course we ever did 

was a course for films. And we had a course in Bergmann's films. 


Uorathy Anker 

Q , Ingmar Bergmann. 

A. Ingmar Bergrnann. That was the very first thing. 

Q. Was that at Sangmon State? 

A. That was at Sangamon Stare. And that we took together. And then we 

had a course which was in filmmaking. 1 even tried myself in making a 

film for the end of the seasion but I did not work the camera toa well 

but I handed it in and because something was overexposed in it and then 

I couldn't get ahold of the camera again because I did it with the 

activities of two of my grandchildren, the ones I have here in town. 

And some of it is still legible. Then later on we had a course of, it 

wasn't quite comparative religion. It wasn't called comparative 

religion but it still gave us a comparison of different religions, which 

we had with Dr. Fischof f . 

Q. Did you take these courses for credit? 

A, No, they had in Sangamon State a very beautiful way of doing it, We 

had to pay only a very minlmal fee and we could attend as senior learners 

any course we felt we wanted to attend. 

Q, Did you and Hans do all these courses together? 

A. I mean this course we rook together and we had later on another 

course with Dr. Fiachof f too. And there cams up a very famous show of 

the Holocaust, And he made us make even a tape recording to watch the 

program. Not only us but the whole class was participating in this, And 

I think I still have these, I've got one of the tapes of that. I think 

my grandson may have takan It along now. I wonder if I can get it back. 

But that we took together. Hans took more and more intriguing courses. 

Also do you happen to know the name of the other teacher who was such an 

excellent . . . 

Q, Was this Chuck Strozier? 

A. Chuck Strozier. Ja, I think he took two different classes with 

Chuck Strozier. I took then, I had found out that I could do 9 l ittle 

painting in my now gained free time. And I went to the Art Association 

and started out with acrylic painting. And when I did this I found out 

that I didn't have enough bask drawing and this is why I went back to a 

drawing course at Sangamon State which helped me with the basics of 

painting. But 1 hope I will find rime enough to go back to that. 

Q. I hope so, I hope in the future that you're going to have much more 

time to do the things that you really want ta do. You're goi~~g on alone 

now without Hans. But you have a wonderful family to support you and 

who f know are interested in seeing you continue your career. I think 

of this studio as really being yours, Dorothy. Because you were the 

first one who knew photography and it was you who taught it to Haas at 

least in the beginning. And 90 It seems somehow quite tight that you 

should continue with it and I hope you do. 

without the Anker Studio, can you? 

I can't imagine Springfield 



A. I don1 t know. The will have to tell, [Dorothy closed the studio 

later that year and retired.] 

Q. Unlass there's anything that we have left out that you particularly 

want to Include I think this really brings us up to dare on the things 

that you have done and the emphasis I have tried to put on your business. 

Because this is one of a series of interviews that I'm doing on 

entrepreneurs and you ere certainly very much an entrepreneur. And I 

don't suppose through the years that the concept of women's liberation 

has bothered you very much. You1 ve been a liberated woman all your 

life, haven't you? 

A, JR, kind of maybe forced. Forced into it because when I started out 

going to school I had more the idea one day I might get married and will 

not have to work. But maybe I wouldn't have liked my life as much if I 

wouldn' t have worked, 

Q. You might have been very bored, though T don't think so. 

A. It may have developed differently but maybe it gave me more 

satifaction than some of the women who are only housewives and nothers. 

And I don't know how life would have, you never know the other side 

because you only live one life. And this is all what comes of it. 

Q. Well, it's been up to this point an extremely interesting life. 1 

feel very privileged to have had these interviews with you. And they 

will of course go in the files of the oral history department of 

Sangamon State University. h d I hope in the future that many atudenrs 

will want ta hear your story and use some of the material. And in the 

meantime I think when it is all transcribed and printed that you and 

your children and grandchildren are going to enjoy having it. I hope 

you will. I do thank you very, very much for doing thle for the 

university. 

END OF TAPE

Dorothy Anker Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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