Dorothy Anker Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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