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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