-I will be sending this link when we're done
along to all teachers
and registrants of this program, so don't worry.
You'll have this here at a later time.
So we are --
As I said, I'm thrilled to be welcoming
Sarah and Margit here today.
Let me just go back one slide to show you why they're here.
The museum just today opened our special exhibit
from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
called "State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda."
And that is what Sarah and Margit
will be sharing with you all here
through the rest of the program.
I'm sure you don't want to hear me continue to talk.
We want to hear from our special guests,
but you'll see the room is going to transition a little bit.
We're going to put on our Webcam here in just one second,
but I want to point out to all of you,
the white box underneath the gray one that says "Q&A,"
that is where you will be typing in questions
throughout the entire program.
This is Chrissy on camera,
but I will be moderating those questions
and looking into them and choosing --
I'm sure we'll get a lot, so I'm going to choose the best
and as many as I can to get through
in the time that we have here today,
and when the time comes,
Margit and Sarah will be answering your questions,
so please type them in there.
I will be looking into them.
So without further ado, I'm going to start our Webcam up
so everybody can see you all.
All right. There we go.
So now you can see Margit and Sarah,
and I guess since I'm off-camera,
would you mind reintroducing yourselves to the audience?
-Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Campbell.
I'm a program coordinator with leadership programs
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
-And I'm Margit Meissner,
and I am a volunteer at the Holocaust Museum,
and I am a Holocaust survivor. -Fantastic.
Well, do you all want to share a little bit
about the special exhibit,
and then, Margit, it would be great
if you could share your story after that.
-Sure. Thanks, Chrissy.
So thank you all so much for joining us.
We're really honored to be here at the museum.
We're here because of the opening, as she said,
of the "State of Deception" exhibition.
"State of Deception" was opened
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington in 2009,
and at the time, it was the most popular exhibition
that we've ever opened, and since then,
it's gone on a national tour.
In addition to being open here in New Orleans,
it's also now being shown, a temporary version,
at the UN, the United Nations, in New York and Paris City Hall.
So today is also what's known as
International Holocaust Remembrance Day,
so we are at the museum in D.C.
And all these other institutions, along with this exhibition,
doing some commemoration around this exhibition
for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
We also are actively engaged in trying to help students
and the public understand what is propaganda,
how they can identify it, and understanding
that it's not just a thing of the past
but also very much a thing of the present.
So to help us kind of talk about propaganda today,
Margit is here to share her story,
and I have some questions for her,
and you have some questions for her,
but I'm going to turn it over to Margit.
So, Margit...
-Well, thank you so much,
and I'm really thrilled that all of you
are watching from all over the United States.
And isn't it amazing technology that makes it possible?
In my early childhood, this would have never, ever occurred.
So I'll tell you that I was born in Austria 95 years ago,
but I lived there only very short time
because my family moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia.
And I was the youngest of four children.
I have three older brothers, and they considered me a little toy,
so I didn't liked that.
Excuse me.
I did not want to be a little toy, nor did I want to be a girl
because I thought it was much better to be a boy.
Now, I have to tell you that at this point
I don't mind being the youngest,
nor do I mind being a woman.
So I grew up in a very assimilated,
quite well-to-do family, and my job was to learn.
I was a perpetual student then,
and I continue to be a perpetual student,
and I'm just thrilled that I am
in this beautiful World War II Museum,
which I didn't even know existed.
So for me, this is a great privilege.
So to come back to my childhood,
my mother had the idea that her children
had to speak four languages by age 16,
so we all spoke German at home and Czech in the street,
and then we had an English nanny and a French nanny.
So we learned four languages,
and I was a very good student,
but not a very interested student.
When I became a teenager, as you can imagine,
I was only interested in boys,
but that didn't work out very well
because sometimes the boys I was interested in
were not interested in me.
So when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938,
I was 16 years old,
and my mother didn't think that it was safe
for me to stay in Czechoslovakia,
although Czechoslovakia was a democratic government
that I knew protected its citizens.
But still, my mother thought I should leave.
Excuse me.
And so, she decided that the best place for me
to be safe would be France,
and she found a French family
that would take me in as a sort of paying guest,
and she shipped me off to Paris by myself,
and, to me, this was a great, great adventure
because I didn't leave much of anything behind.
I left some friends behind, but I was so sure
I was going to see everybody again in a short time
because I had no idea what the future would hold for us,
and I think I was not the only one who didn't know
because you have to understand that at that time in the world,
there were no media.
So for all of you, I presume you cannot imagine
that one could live without a television,
without a computer, without a cellphone.
None of this existed, so we had newspapers,
and we had some posters, such as the ones
that are being exhibited
in the propaganda exhibit here in the museum,
and we had the radio.
Now, the radio was a brand-new thing
that had not existed before,
and the Nazis made very good use of the radio
because they gave a radio to every German family,
and the only channel that one could play
was the government channel -- was full of propaganda.
And everybody sat in a circle around the radio
because this was the only thing that talked to you in your home,
and the more they listened to propaganda,
the more they believed it.
So propaganda was a very, very important method
whereby Hitler tried to convince the German people
that all of Germany's woes
and all the problems that Germany had
were due to the Jews.
The Nazis believed that the Jews had stabbed them in the back
at the end of World War I in 1919
and that they had to fight the Jews
so that they would not continue hurting the German public.
Now, many German people did not know any Jews
because less than 1% of the population was Jewish,
but the propaganda was very effective,
and many people started believing it,
and even if they didn't believe it, they just thought,
"Well, the Nazi government should do whatever it wanted,"
and this comes to one of the issues
that is very important to me.
I'm going to drink something, if you don't mind.
Excuse me.
It meant that the German public stood by
while the Nazi was preparing for war,
and this is something which is very important to me
because I think that maybe World War II could have been avoided
if the Western countries had not stood by
in letting Hitler do whatever he wanted
because they didn't really take it seriously.
So how did that affect me?
So when Austria was annexed in 1938,
my mother sent me to Paris.
I lived in a French family that was very nice to me,
but the French police was not nice at all.
They thought that I was a nuisance.
Why did I come there? Why didn't I stay at home?
They didn't want any foreigners, and I felt very uncomfortable
in a country that really didn't want me,
although my personal experiences were very good.
And I was learning dressmaking.
Now, why was I learning dressmaking?
Because I needed to have a profession
with which I could make a living that was not based on languages,
because I didn't know where we might end up.
So you have to understand that in 1938,
if you wanted to buy a dress,
you didn't go to the department store.
That didn't exist, so you went to the dressmaker.
So dressmaking was a respected profession,
and I was a fairly good student,
although I was not careful enough,
as my teachers reminded me very frequently,
because I was not very patient,
and I am more impatient than ever,
I have to tell you.
I am not good at waiting.
So that was in 1939.
Then all of --
After the Austrian annexation in 1938,
in March of 1939,
all of Czechoslovakia was annexed,
and at that point, my mother came to join me in Paris,
but she left in such a hurry
to be able to get out of Czechoslovakia quickly
that the only thing she was able to bring out of all our assets
was a little, small suitcase.
So overnight, we became paupers.
Until then, mother had been able to send me a monthly sum
with which I could cover my expenses,
but now we had no more money
and we were really dependent on handouts from others,
and we kept watching what was going on in the war.
So in March of 1939,
the Germans invaded Poland,
and that started World War II
because France and Great Britain declared war on Germany.
And so now, all of a sudden,
because I was an Austrian citizen
and Austria was part of Germany,
so I became an enemy alien.
Suddenly I was really an enemy
because I was considered a German,
and the police became even more aggressive
and more uncomfortable,
more unfriendly,
and I became more uncomfortable.
And, of course, I was watching the propaganda
that existed in France
because the French tried to reassure its public
that they had nothing to worry about,
that Germany was never going to defeat France
because France had built the Maginot Line,
the fortress at the border between France and Germany,
and they did not understand that the fortress was not good enough
because when the Germans came in,
they circumvented the fortress and came in through France,
through Holland and Belgium.
And there we were at war in France
and still watching German propaganda.
For example, there was a big poster all over Paris
which had the whole world in red,
and then Germany was a little spot
that was marked in black and white,
and it said, "How can they win us
if they are so insignificant in the world?"
Well, that was obviously propaganda
which was not well-conceived.
So while we were watching this
and wondering what was going to happen to us,
since we were in a country where we were not welcome
and the war was approaching,
so we tried to find ways of leaving,
but nobody in the world was interested in giving us asylum.
And that was a terrible thing for millions of people like me
because, during the 1930s, there was depression in the world,
and no country was really interested
in accepting penniless refugees,
including the United States.
So while this was going on and the war was coming closer,
one day my mother received notification
that she was going to be deported.
They didn't call it deported.
They said that she would be -- What was the --
-Evacuated? -Evacuated, thank you.
-You're welcome. -She would be evacuated.
And so, she was told come to the police station
in a neighboring town with three days worth of food,
whatever you could carry on your back, and three blankets.
And I took her to the police station,
and when I came, I said, "Why are you taking her?"
And they said, "None of your business."
And, "Where are you taking her?"
"Go home. We are not answering questions."
So here I was, all by myself.
My mother was leaving, and the Germans were approaching,
so it was a very scary moment.
But the last minute before mother entered the bus,
she took out of her pocket a sum of money,
some several thousand francs,
and gave them to me and said,
"Now it's up to you to get us out of here."
Whatever that meant, I have never been able to find out,
but it occurred to me that that meant
that I had to see whether I could find her
and liberate her wherever she was
and that I had to get both of us
out of this impossible situation.
So while I was debating this,
the Germans came closer and closer,
and there was this tremendous exodus out of France,
where people were just streaming in a certain direction
to the south,
and I could not walk in the street
because there were these tremendous crowds.
Now, because I had been at the police every other week,
I went to --
They told me that I was never going to be able to leave
without permission,
so I decided to go to the police station
to see whether they would let me leave
so that I could find my mom.
And when I came to the police station,
the police station was open,
but the policemen had gone.
They had joined the crowds that were leaving.
So I thought now I had an alibi
so that I could leave without permission.
And when I looked at this tremendously chaotic crowd,
I got so frightened
that I thought it couldn't possibly join the walk,
and then I remembered that mother had given me some money,
so I took the money and decided to buy a bicycle.
And I must have found the last bicycle
that was available in Paris.
It was a men's racing bike with these curved handles,
and I bought that bike, and on that bike, I left Paris.
And I had with me a little case
in which I had my dressmaking notes.
I had two chocolate croissants and a set of oil paints,
because I thought if I was going to become a dressmaker
or dress designer,
I also needed to be able to design fashion.
So that was the idea with which I left.
And I was very frightened,
but then it turned out that I had an advantage
over most of the other people,
because with a bicycle,
I could get around all the stalled cars
and the crowds of people who were inching ahead of me.
So I have a long story about this escape
about which I wrote a book, if any of you are interested.
It is called "Margit's Story," and it is available on Amazon.
But because we don't have time for me to tell you
the escape in detail,
I will just tell you that, quite by accident, I found my mother.
It was really a miracle that I found her,
and she was in a French concentration camp
on the border of France and Spain,
so that I now had a direction where to go.
And when I eventually found a train --
I left my bike, and I found a train,
and when the train stopped, by miracle,
I was about 20 kilometers from the camp of Gurs, where she was.
So when the war was over -- and it ended very chaotically
because the French government gave up
but didn't have another government,
so there were a few days of great chaos --
so she was able to leave the concentration camp and join me.
And together, we escaped further
to what then became the unoccupied part of France
of the Mediterranean to the city of Marseille.
And in Marseille,
there were lots of other refugees
also from Czechoslovakia, from Austria,
who were all trying to find visas to leave France
and save themselves from the war.
Now, I was able to secure
a Spanish and a Portuguese transit visa,
transit meaning just driving through,
not staying there,
but the French would not give us exit permits.
They said, "You cannot leave unless we give you permission,"
and the French would not give us permission.
So on the day before our visas expired,
mother and I decided we would go to the French-Spanish border
and see whether we might be able
to get through without permission.
So we arrived at -- Really, this trip was very scary
because we were constantly avoiding the police
that were controlling the access to the border.
-And this is in the mountains, right?
-Yeah. -This is in the middle of the Pyrenees Mountains.
-Well, it's on the border of the Pyrenees Mountains.
-Yeah. So you're trying to cross a mountain, basically?
-Well, yes, but, of course, we were still trying to cross --
-To get over? -...to get permission
to cross on the railroad because we didn't.
So I, in desperation, because it was the last day
of the validity of the visa,
I approached a porter in the railroad station
and explained our situation to him,
and he said, "Well, maybe I can help you.
I can show you how you can walk across the border,"
which was in the mountains up on the French side
and down on the Spanish side.
And he said, "But be careful
because if the Spanish police catches you,
they are going to catch you
because you are crossing the border
at an unauthorized place."
So I said, "Well, if you give us directions, we won't get lost,"
but we did get lost.
The Spanish police caught us, and we went to a Spanish jail.
Well, that was a most incredible experience,
because I was a very proper young lady,
and I thought I was never going to go to jail.
And so, when we found ourselves in this fascist jail,
because Spain had just gone through a revolution
and the Fascist government won,
so it was a very scary moment
in which I learned a lot about the world,
because there were prostitutes there,
and I never thought in my life I would meet a prostitute.
You can imagine.
But the prostitutes were the ones
who really helped us in jail
because we didn't have a bowl
into which they would give us our food,
and we didn't have anything with us
that most of the other prisoners had,
so if the prostitutes had not helped us,
we might not have been able to survive.
And so, that was such a meaningful experience for me
that I had to rethink what my worldview was
and what I was thinking, and I became --
Really, I started to become a different person,
a person who was aware of the world
and aware of my position in it
and also aware of the role that the individual could play.
So to end this report, I have to tell you that we got out of jail
with the help of very lovely friends,
and we were able to get to Portugal, where we were staying,
wondering what was going to happen next because, of course,
we did not really have permission
to remain in Portugal.
We only had permission to drive through Portugal.
But we were able to stay there,
and I became a successful dressmaker
because many of the other refugees
had also lost all their belongings like we,
and I became the dressmaker to the refugees,
and my mother became my helper.
So that was a good thing to do, but the situation was very dicey
because we didn't know what would happen next.
So quite miraculously, we got an affidavit of support
which enabled us to get an American immigration visa.
So here, now, we were ready to go to the United States,
but there was no shipping because the war was on,
and there were U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean.
So eventually, we were able to get passage
on a Portuguese cork freighter
that brought cork for wine bottles
to the United States.
And it traveled across the Atlantic Ocean
for three weeks, during which I was primarily seasick,
but if I was not seasick, I played ping-pong with the crew.
So I learned a lot of Portuguese
while I was talking to the sailors,
and I also learned a lot of ping-pong,
so I've become a very good ping-pong player.
So I came to the United States in April of 1941.
I was 19 years old, and I landed in the Chesapeake Bay.
I did not see the Statue of Liberty
because that was not how I came to the United States.
And from then on, I have lived here
and with great pleasure of being an American
and with living in a country that has been wonderful to me.
So that's my story.
-Before we take questions,
I want to have you just briefly talk
about what you did during the war
and then after the war back in Germany...
-Oh, yeah. -...with propaganda.
How did propaganda play a part after the war?
-So propaganda played a big part during the war
because I worked in the American...
-The Office of War... -The Office of War Information.
I always forget that name. In the Office of War Information.
And the reason why I got the job there
was because I spoke Czech and Portuguese.
That was very unusual.
Most people either spoke Slavic languages or Latin languages
but not a mix.
So I worked in the Office of...
-War Information. -...War Information,
and I was a producer of propaganda
because I helped create the information
that the United States was sending out to the world.
And I felt very good about that
because I knew how important propaganda was
in winning the war
and how important it was for the United States
to explain itself to the world
that knew relatively little about America.
And then...
-And it's a good reminder that propaganda
can be positive, right, that it can have a good message?
-Right. And then after the war,
I had gotten married,
and my husband was discharged from the Army
and went to Nuremberg to the war crimes trials,
where he was employed by the American section of the court.
And I went along as a spouse,
but I was very unhappy in Germany
because Germany was totally destroyed,
and I felt that I was an American,
but I could have been on the other side easily.
So it was a difficult, psychologically
very difficult moment for me,
but it was saved by my applying for work
at the Army of Occupation,
and they decided I was maybe a good candidate for a job
to re-educate the German youth.
So I was in charge of German youth activities
for the American military government
in the Nuremberg region,
and that was a really interesting job.
It was not actually developing propaganda,
but I tried to explain to people
what a democratic country looked like
and what education in the United States looked like,
which was so different
from what the German public was used to.
So propaganda was an important part of my life in Germany.
And then when I, for many,
many years didn't think of propaganda
because I worked in a local school system
on the integration of handicapped children
into the general education program,
but when I retired from this job
and I started working
for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
as a volunteer
and the museum started this propaganda exhibit,
which has now just opened in New Orleans,
I became very much involved in propaganda again.
So propaganda really has sort of followed me
through my adult life.
-Wonderful. Thank you, Margit. Thank you so much.
So we do have some questions that we're going to answer.
The first one I'm going to answer.
It's just, "What does the Holocaust mean?"
So the word "Holocaust" actually comes from a Greek word,
and it means literally
sort of a burnt offering or a burnt clearing.
The definition that we now think of today as the Holocaust
is the state-sponsored,
systematic, bureaucratic persecution
and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany
and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
And so, that's sort of a really broad definition.
Some of the big important things in there
are that it's not just Nazi Germany alone.
The collaborators of other countries are included,
but it is state-sponsored, though.
It was the policy of Nazi Germany
and that it was systematic and bureaucratic.
It had a sort of backing in this apparatus behind it,
so that's really the definition of the Holocaust that we use.
So that's just to help everyone understand.
I have some questions for you, Margit, from the group,
so the first one -- And thank you, Tia,
for that question about the definition of the Holocaust.
T.M. wanted to know,
"What happened to your older brothers?"
-Well, so my older brothers
were all able to save themselves,
but in different part of the world.
My oldest brother was able to find asylum in Australia.
My second brother found asylum in Canada,
my third brother in Spain,
and here I am in the United States,
so we are all --
We have families all over the globe,
and for many, many years, we didn't see each other
because first there was the war,
and then we were too poor to travel.
But we all got settled,
and then we started meeting again,
and now, every three years, we have a family reunion.
And by now, the whole family has grown to 54 members,
so we are very fortunate
because Hitler was trying to eradicate the Jews,
and we survived, and we multiplied.
-So -- And Mr. Lock's class wanted to know,
"How many languages can you speak?"
You said you spoke four, and then you added Portuguese.
How many languages do you speak?
-Well, so I started out with German.
My second language was Czech.
My third language was French.
My fourth language was English.
My next language was Portuguese.
My next -- So that was five.
-That's five. Yeah.
-Then my next language was Hungarian.
-Hungarian. -Then I started to learn Russian.
-Russian. -And then I learned Spanish.
-Spanish.
-And now I have learned some Italian.
-Wow. -So we're up to nine --
-Nine. -Nine languages.
-Oh, my goodness.
-But I only really speak well English.
I think that's my best language.
-You do wonderful. Yeah.
-Yeah.
-And there's a question about the radio.
So did you have a radio at home, as well?
-Well, we had a very special occasion with this radio,
so although we were a well-to-do family,
we did not have the kind of radio
that the Germans gave to the German families.
We only had a little crystal set
that my mother used to listen to, and I was --
When Hitler came to power, I was 10 years old,
and my mother was messing with this little crystal set
because there was a big speech that she needed to listen to,
and it was very important to her,
and I must have made some kind of noise that annoyed her,
and she yelled at me, and she said, "Shut up, Margit."
Now, my mother never said "shut up" to me,
so five minutes later,
after she had listened to what she wanted to listen,
she came to me and apologized and said,
"I'm very sorry that I yelled at you,
but there's a man in Germany by the name of Adolf Hitler,
and he persecutes Jews, and we are Jewish,
and I have to find out what he's saying
so that I can protect you."
And that five-minute interlude
really started my awareness
of the world around me.
I was 10 years old, and at my, I guess, educational level,
I began to listen to news and read the newspaper
and become aware of what goes on in the world,
and that has remained with me to this day.
-And that's really important because you were in Czechoslovakia.
You said in Germany, the radio,
they could only hear sort of one station, one message.
But in other countries --
-In Czechoslovakia, the radio that we had
was such poor quality
that one wasn't able to listen to anything.
-But even in the United States and other countries,
they could hear what was going on in Germany.
But in Germany, they could only hear their own thing.
-Correct. -Yeah. Okay.
The next question from the Richardson Home School was,
"Were you ever scared?"
-Yes. I was plenty scared many times.
First of all, I was always scared
when I went to the police.
In the beginning, when I was in Paris,
I had to go to the police every other week,
and I was always scared there because they were so aggressive,
and they kept telling me that, why was I there?
So I was scared, and I was very --
-And they told you if you didn't check in,
they would find you and arrest you, right?
So that was probably scary, too. -Yeah. That was scary.
And then I was very scared when my mother left,
and then when I sort of looked at the opportunities,
I didn't come up with a bicycle right away.
I tried to go to the railroad station,
and the railroad was closed,
and there was a big sign there,
"No more trains until the end of hostilities,"
and I didn't know what this meant.
-Who knew when that was going to be?
-And then I was there all by myself,
because most of my friends were Czechs.
They were not Austrians. They were Czechs.
And the Czechs were not enemy aliens in France,
so I really didn't have any other contact, so...
And when I started riding the bicycle,
I was very scared, so there were many scary moments.
And the moment when the Spanish police took us to the jail,
it was in the middle of the night in a dark street
that I had no idea where we were going,
and there was this big building in front of us
that turned out to be a prison,
and when they opened the door to the prison,
I thought the end of the world had arrived.
-Yeah. That sounds very scary.
So Ms. Jackson's class asked,
"When you were reunited with your mom,
what was her reaction?"
What did she -- You said it was sort of
by accident or kind of a miracle.
-Well, it was really quite a location.
So I was in this small town, Salies-de-Bearn,
which was, as I said, 20 kilometers from Gurs,
and the lady at whose house I was staying,
which was an acquaintance who was very good to me,
she decided to go to the --
As soon as I arrived, she went to the camp of Gurs
to see whether she could find my mother
and tell her that her child was safe,
because she knew that Paris had just fallen.
But she came to the camp and couldn't find my mother
and left a message there and came back to me
and said, "Look, I was in Gurs. It was chaotic.
I couldn't find your mother.
I left a message, but don't count on it,
that she will have never gotten it."
And so, I was sitting there waiting, not quite to do,
what to do next,
and the government was just changing,
and nobody knew what was going on.
And I was sitting in the yard,
and suddenly I saw a woman from far away approaching me,
waving at me, and I didn't wave back
because I didn't know anybody who could wave at me.
-Yeah. Who could it be, right? -Who could it be?
So this person came closer and closer,
and she waved more energetically,
and I still didn't wave back.
And when she came close, I realized it was my mom.
-That's amazing. -And I had not recognized her
because she had lost a lot of weight,
and she was very dark in her face
because she had spent most of her time outdoors.
And so I didn't come to welcome her or to embrace her,
and the only thing she ever said
about her stay in the concentration camp
was here she found her child
and I wasn't even welcoming to her,
so that was a great disappointment to her.
-Yeah. -So then she has never forgotten that
because she never wanted to talk about her experience there.
The only thing that she used to say about that
was when I had children and my children were small
and they made --
They were fussy eaters,
and they didn't want to eat what was on their plates.
She used to say to them, "You should have been in Gurs.
You would have eaten anything that was put in front of you."
-Oh, wow.
-That was 30 years later.
-Yeah.
Do you know how long you were
in the Spanish jail for, about how long?
-About a couple of weeks. -Couple of weeks?
Okay. -Long enough...
-Yeah. -...to have a skin rash
because, of course, the sanitary condition were unbelievable.
-They weren't that good. Yeah.
And what about after? So this is Mr. Lock's class.
They had two questions.
First, did you ever have bad dreams about your experience?
Did you have nightmares?
-I sometimes still have bad dreams.
-Still do. Yeah. -And you know what I really dream about?
-What do you dream about?
-I keep thinking of what it would have been like
to have been in a concentration camp
and be forced to do things which I physically could not tolerate
and what would I have done. -Yeah.
-So I think of this in my exercise class
when I am doing things which are very hard,
and I force myself to continue doing it because I think,
"If I had been in a concentration camp,
I would have had to continue."
-No matter what. Yeah.
-So it's probably a crazy dream.
-The next question from Mr. Lock's class was,
"What about your friends in Paris?
Were they also Jews, or were they non-Jews?"
-My friends were not Jewish. -And how did they react,
then, when all of this was happening?
Did they turn against you, or...?
-No. They certainly did not agree
with the Nazi propaganda,
and they were trying to protect --
They had Jewish friends who they were trying to protect.
-That's good. -They tried to be as welcoming
and as helpful as possible, and some of my friends
then became part of the French underground.
-So the Resistance? -The Resistance, yes.
But officially, the French police and the French government
were very eager to show how they supported Hitler
because the French then believed
that Germany was going to win the war
and so they might as well be on good terms
with this new government,
and they were eager to show that they would support
whatever the Germans wanted to support.
-So just a few more questions.
From the Mellon Middle School,
"Did you face anti-Semitism when you came to the U.S.?"
Did you experience any of that?
-Well, I personally did not experience any,
but I remember maybe a year or two after I came,
I tried to go to a resort in New Hampshire,
and that was restricted,
which meant that they did not want any Jewish guests.
So that was very, very disappointing
because I thought
there was no anti-Semitism in the United States,
but I was very wrong at the time
because there was quite a bit of anti-Semitism,
and, unfortunately, there still is some
because we hear it.
Especially lately, we've seen all kinds
of anti-Semitic actions
all across the country.
So anti-Semitism is not dead.
And even in Europe where there are no Jews,
countries are still very anti-Semitic,
so I am a firm believer that one has to fight these injustices
and that individuals should not just stand by
when they see injustice
or prejudice or bullying in their neighborhoods.
They just can't say, "It's none of my business," and walk away.
You have to take on the fight
and see how you can mend the fences.
-That's good. Okay.
So, and Lee wants to know,
"How many children and grandchildren do you have?"
-I have two children and two granddaughters.
And I have a daughter
who lives close to me in Silver Spring, Maryland,
where I live in Bethesda, Maryland,
and I have a son who lives in New York
who is working for a large hospital in --
At first, he worked in HIV/AIDS programs
and then in palliative care
for people who need to minimize pain,
and now he works on medical research.
And my two granddaughters are lovely young women.
My older granddaughter is 27, and she's a PhD candidate
at Northwestern University,
where she is studying public policy and...
-The younger one?
-...the law. -Oh, the law.
-And my younger one works
in an organization called Big Brothers Big Sisters,
and she --
This is an organization
that works with teenagers
that have problems in the world
and matches them with volunteers,
and she does this matching, so she --
They both work in really --
what is this --
in civil rights organizations.
-That's great. Okay.
Two more questions. I'm going to save
a more contemporary question for the end, but...
So just from M.K., wanted to know,
"Just how did you cope with everything as it was happening,
and how did you deal with it? How did you cope?"
-I have never really thought about this
because I just had to put one foot in front of the other,
and every day brought in new issues,
and I had to deal with them, so...
But I thought that I really
didn't lose optimism.
I remember the most negative moment
was when the Spanish police captured us.
I thought that was really the end of the world,
but it wasn't because they took us not in handcuffs,
but they were holding us and took us on a train
and then took us to jail, so we survived the jail.
So the more difficult moments you survive,
the more strength you gain.
-That's true. -And so --
And I was a risk-taker.
I took immense risks, and they turned out well,
and I keep taking risks in my life.
-That's good. -And what I would like to say
to the young people, that, "Don't be afraid of risks."
Most people are afraid of failure.
That's why they don't take any risks,
so I think, don't be afraid of failure.
Try whatever you want to try, and if it doesn't work out,
well, you will have learned something,
and you start something new or you'll fix what went wrong.
So I believe that you should take risks in life
and try new situations
and not be afraid of not being able to manage.
-That's good. That's good advice. Yeah.
Okay, so the last question from Elizabeth is about today,
and Elizabeth wants to know -- You were a refugee, right,
so you were fleeing your home and you were leaving,
so from your experience as a refugee,
what can you tell us about
how we can help today in the world?
We see refugees on the news all the time.
What's your thoughts about that?
-Well, there is all kinds of things we can do.
Many of them are beyond our power
because we cannot really interfere
in our government's actions,
although I believe we can be important part
of what our government does.
So I am a great letter writer.
I wrote numbers of letters to my presidents
and to my senators and representatives,
and I always say what I think because I think,
"How should they know what I think if I don't tell them?"
So that's one thing.
I'm also very aware of what goes on at the local level
in my community,
and there are lots of things that go on at the state level
that you can influence,
so I believe that's an important thing of --
That's an important part of who I am,
that I'm really aware of what goes on.
And it is more difficult than it's ever been,
because with social media,
you have hundreds, thousands of people
who provide information,
and who knows what they really have in mind
when they put out these messages?
So you have to be more careful to listen,
more careful to understand who is saying what
and evaluate what you're hearing and not just accept it
because there's also lots of untruth
that goes on in the world,
and it's up to you to figure out what you can believe
and what you can't believe.
And I think one has to listen to all sides in a dispute
so that you can take a rational position.
-That's wonderful.
-Man, that's the perfect way to end this program today.
All of you out there, let's give a virtual round of applause
to Sarah and Margit.
I know you can't see them and hear them,
but I'm sure they're appreciative of everything,
so maybe give one last wave out to the crowds.
Thank you all so much for joining us.
And thank you, Sarah and Margit,
for everything that you've done for us today
and this wonderful last couple days here at the museum.
Just as a --
To close out, everybody, we're going to just move ahead,
and you're going to see a lot of resources
now pop up on your screen.
Let me actually start at the beginning here.
First off, if we have some --
You know, sometimes we have some local audiences
and regional audiences watching with us.
Please come see
"State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda"
here at the National World War II Museum.
It's a powerful and moving exhibit
and, you know, makes you just think and question,
which is exactly what you, you know, want to do
and especially looking at propaganda then
and even connecting it to today.
So that is great. And we hope you come see it
and see it at the other locations
even that Sarah mentioned, if you're able.
There are a lot of great resources that are a part
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website
and, of course, at the museum, too.
Their main area where they discuss propaganda
on their website is there, that link.
And don't worry. You'll see this again.
This is a rotating slide show, so if you miss it here...
Margit mentioned her story.
If you are really interested in her story
and want to learn more,
you can purchase her book
"Margit's Story," and it's on Amazon.
And that link will also take you to the Amazon page.
And then lastly, I want to share we've got --
Our next webinar coming up is with author Steve Sheinkin
of the book "Bomb,"
which is a Newbery Honor Book
and a National Book Award finalist.
It is about, of course, the atomic bomb.
So "The Race to Build -- and Steal --
The World's Most Dangerous Weapon."
He will be joining us in March, and it should be a really great
and interesting program
with a lot of great STEM connections
for you teachers out there.
While you're sitting here and listening
and looking at everything,
there are a couple poll questions below, as well.
"Why does propaganda matter today?
And how can we guard against propaganda?"
I think Margit brought up some really wonderful lessons here
that are relevant to our lives
and important to our lives today,
and so we kind of want to hear from you
and how you evaluate propaganda and how you see it today.
And then lastly,
on the left-hand side of the slide show there,
you should see a few more links
that can bring you to some more interesting stuff
from the National World War II Museum
and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I think that's it for me,
and I think that's it for Sarah and Margit here,
so we just want to say a big thank you
to the audience out there, and we'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.