Oral History Interview with Anne Dore Russell
Anne Dore Weidemann-Russell, a non-Jew born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926, describes going to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg; her father telling her about the experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler; her uncle being sent to Sachsenhausen; hearing about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs; a neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer and had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front; Kristallnacht and life in Brandenburg under the Nazis; her father, who was a civil servant, losing his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD); her father’s reasons for opposing the Nazi regime; how her father avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company); learning to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs; the local police taking her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler; the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war; and attending Humbold University in East Berlin and the Free University in West Berlin after the war.
Date: | 04/17/1984 |
Interviewer: | Hanna Silver |
Interviewee: | Anne Dore Russell |
Language: | English |
Subject: | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Personal narratives. Jehovah's Witnesses--Nazi persecution. Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Germany. Jews--Persecutions--Germany. Political prisoners--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Children--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Collaborationists--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, German. World War, 1939-1945--Psychological aspects. Women--Personal narratives. Berlin (Germany) Brandenburg (Brandenburg, Germany) Germany--Social conditions--1933-1945. United States--Emigration and immigration. Weidemann-Russell, Anne, 1926- BBC Radio. |
Location: | Brandenburg, Germany West-Berlin, Germany |
Permalink: | https://hoha.digitalcollections.gratzcollege.edu/item/oral-history-interview-with-anne-dore-russell/ |
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0:51:05 |