Frank Liebermann
“We couldn’t use parks. Stores were boycotted…[my father] knew in 1936 that he couldn’t make a living.” Listen to Frank Liebermann describe life in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. Learn more about his experiences and the choices his family made to escape Nazi terror during the Holocaust.
Audio
Transcript
Frank Liebermann:
We had three rooms for the first, second, and third grades. And it was segregated in, within the school and the most scary part of the day was for recess. Everybody had to leave the building around lunchtime for about half an hour. We generally tried to navigate between… the boys and girls were separated on one side and the other side of the yard. Basically, we tried to navigate in between where we had supervision and basically were not physically harmed but it was the most unpleasant part of the school day.
Bill Benson:
When you said you had three rooms for your grades, that was three rooms for the Jewish students in a larger public school?
Frank Liebermann:
That’s correct, in a large school. We couldn’t use parks. Stores were boycotted. As I said hospital privileges were delayed—rather, were rescinded. My father’s brother lost his job and went from a government economist and found a job in Austria as an assistant manager of a department store. But everybody wanted to make a living and wanted to do the best he could.
Bill Benson:
For your father, losing hospital privileges and other changes essentially meant he could not practice medicine?
Frank Liebermann:
That’s correct. Now, it's–Germany had socialized medicine, which means that the government basically paid for all the patients. Therefore, they stopped doing that so that he was still treating some people who wanted, whom he knew. But even at that point, after 1936, an SA Nazi guard stood in front of the office and asked anybody who was coming upstairs what he was doing and threatened them with loss of jobs and other punishments. So that for all practical purposes, he knew in 1936 that he couldn’t make a living.
Also, the main street corners had postings of Der Stürmer which means “a storm.” It’s hard to translate again. It’s basically, it means... call it “the coming storm” or whatever it’s called. Which was entirely an antisemitic paper which showed caricatures, ugly caricatures, stories of harm being done to children, harm being done all by Jews against Germany. It just portrayed everybody as being extremely ugly and being... people to stay away from. They were–in order to keep them from... They were published on a weekly basis and were put kind of in–on stands. I don’t know if you have ever seen it. It’s behind glass so that if anybody was at a bus stop they could immediate–they had some good reading material in order to educate them.
Bill Benson:
Like we see advertisements at bus stations today...
Frank Liebermann:
Exactly, exactly.
Bill Benson:
Only it was horrible propaganda.
Frank Liebermann:
Yes.
Biography
Frank Liebermann was born in 1929 to Dr. Hans and Lotte Liebermann in Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). At the time, Gleiwitz was an industrial city in Upper Silesia—a historically contested region that was then along the German-Polish border. Frank was an only child. Hans was a prominent surgeon in the city and the family lived a comfortable middle-class existence. The families of both of Frank’s parents had lived in the area for several generations.
In 1933, the Nazi regime began to enact antisemitic laws limiting the participation of Jews in German public life. At first these laws did not apply in Gleiwitz because a 1922 treaty protected minority rights in the region. Frank was about six years old when he began attending public school. Jewish students were segregated from the Christians, but the Christian students threatened them physically. At the end of the day, teachers released the Jewish children early, so they had a head start leaving school before the other children were let out.
The treaty expired after 15 years and antisemitic laws took effect in Upper Silesia. These laws led to rapid changes in Gleiwitz. Denied hospital privileges and not allowed to accept insurance payments, Hans could no longer make a living. Frank and other Jews were no longer allowed at playgrounds, swimming pools, and other venues.
Hans traveled to the United States in 1938 to explore the prospect of immigration. With the help of a cousin, he obtained an affidavit that enabled the Liebermanns to be placed on a waiting list for visas. He then returned to Lotte and Frank in Gleiwitz to wait for the visas they would need to immigrate to the United States.
The Liebermann family received their visas in June 1938. Hans immediately left for the United States to begin preparing for the State Medical Board examination in Ohio, since it was less difficult for him to obtain a medical license there than in other states. After passing the state examination, he set up a medical practice in Dayton.
Frank and Lotte stayed behind to settle household affairs and then purchased tickets for a ship bound for the United States that departed Germany on October 13, 1938, less than a month before Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a night of state-sponsored targeted violence against Jews throughout Germany.
Hans managed to get a visa for his father, Frank’s paternal grandfather, Bernhard Liebermann. Unfortunately, Bernhard had been hospitalized and was too ill to travel. In August 1942, German authorities deported Bernhard to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where he died shortly afterwards.
Frank’s maternal grandparents, Alfred and Hedwig Orgler, were also unable to leave Germany. In April 1943, authorities deported the couple to Theresienstadt, and then in October 1944 to Auschwitz, where they were killed. The exact fate of Frank’s maternal uncles, Walter, Heinz, and Helmuth, is unclear. None of them survived the Holocaust.
Frank graduated from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1950 with a degree in chemistry. He worked as a travel agent and volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.