Oral History Interview with Herbert Lindemeyer
Herbert Lindemeyer, born in Minden, Germany in 1922, describes his father, who owned a pharmacy; antisemitism after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor; the boycott of Jewish stores in April 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935; his parents’ discussions of whether to emigrate; Kristallnacht and his father’s incarceration in Buchenwald for a month and the confiscation of his pharmacy by the Nazis; immigrating to England in August 1939 through the help of a British Quaker woman; his internment with thousands of German and Austrian refugees in June 1940 on the Isle of Man; being allowed to leave the internment camp in December 1941; working in a defense job in Manchester, England; getting married in January 1944 to a woman who had traveled to England on the Kindertransport; joining the American Army in October 1945 for an assignment in Germany as an interpreter and mail censor; tracking Werner Von Braun; returning to Minden, where the new owner of his father’s pharmacy had kept papers which helped Herbert obtain restitution; and immigrating to the US in 1948.
Date: | 12/06/1983 |
Interviewer: | Eileen Steinberg |
Interviewee: | Herbert Lindemeyer |
Language: | English |
Subject: | Aliens--Great Britain. Anti-Jewish boycotts--Germany. Holocaust survivors--United States. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Personal narratives. Jewish businesspeople--Germany. Jewish property--Germany. Jewish refugees--Great Britain. Jews, German--Great Britain. Jews--Germany--Minden (North Rhine-Westphalia) Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Germany. Jews--Persecutions--Germany. Kristallnacht, 1938. Postal surveillance. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Isle of Man. World War, 1939-1945--War work. Men--Personal narratives. |
Location: | Minden, Germany England USA |
Permalink: | https://hoha.digitalcollections.gratzcollege.edu/item/oral-history-interview-with-herbert-lindemeyer/ |
Audio Transcript | Time |
---|---|
0:47:59 |