A Story of Survival with Ralph Rehbock

I have a really special episode for you today with the oldest guest I have ever had on guyset. It's his first ever podcast at 90 years old. Ralph Raybach is on today to share the story of how he and his family survived the Holocaust. The opportunity to hear from Holocaust survivors is so limited as many of them are no longer here with us.

and most people have never had and might not ever have the chance to do so. I feel so fortunate to share this episode with you and I thought that because I have a permanent place to keep Ralph and his family's story alive that people can always come back to and listen to, I can't pass up the opportunity to do so. It's also the perfect time to do this episode with tomorrow being Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the beginning, Ralph shares his incredibly valuable advice for all young guys and then goes into his story.

I gained a new and incredibly important perspective throughout this episode and I hope that you will too. I feel so privileged to share this one with you. Without further ado, please welcome Ralph Rehbach to Geissan.

Josh Felgoise (01:35.148)

Ralph, welcome to Geisset. I'm so privileged to have you on and to have this conversation with you. First and foremost, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be with you, Josh. And for the audience who may not know who you are, how old are you? Where are you from and where are you living now? My name is Ralph Raybach. I was born in Goethe, Germany.

I'm presently living in Northbrook, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, and I'm 90 years old. Ralph, I am so excited for you to be able to share your story with this audience and to have it on Geisset forever for people to listen to. I'm assuming that my audience has never had the opportunity to hear from somebody

who is a Holocaust survivor who lived in Germany during the Holocaust, who has the knowledge and the breadth of perspective that you have. So I'm so thrilled to bring them you and your story. So I'm gonna give you the floor for most of the conversation, but before that, I wanted to ask you a couple questions. What is your message for every young guy out there today? Thank you. My message is,

Stories matter, not necessarily just stories of the Holocaust. I'm charging each of the young men that are listening today to do something. Take your devices, get together with your parents slash grandparents slash great grandparents in any particular setting that you might have. Ask them were they were born.

ask them where they met, ask them where they went to school, ask them what their jobs were, and not necessarily each one of them individually or together. But the reason that I'm asking that question is all too often when people die, the family is asked to share with the minister, the rabbi, the priest,

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a story of their lives so that he can tell it to the people who are in attendance. And in the sense of that, one of your grandparents, one of your great grandparents might pass away someday and people will be asking, and only if you get together with them now, and now in quotation marks, and get those things down on your devices and put them away.

for that particular time when either in school, somebody asks you for a family tree or someone else asks you for stories about them, you will have it. If you don't do it, don't think of it now, it'll never get done. As in most cases, it doesn't exist. And that's my charge and my story to them. To say nothing of those of us who are Holocaust survivors who have made it

a point to find our stories, repeat our stories, tell our stories as many times as we can or are asked to do so, because those stories must last as well so that nobody can say that the Holocaust never happened. I think that's an incredible piece of advice and definitely something we haven't heard on here before. So thank you for sharing that.

Why do you think there is so much misinformation or misunderstanding about the Holocaust amongst my generation? those states, that Holocaust study is mandated. More and more it has been learned by sixth graders, seventh graders, eighth graders and history students. In those states where it's not mandated.

It is much more difficult to have the information of what the Holocaust was and was about shared, because it's not required to be shared. And just like my conversation about getting your stories from your families, regardless of having nothing to do with the Holocaust, the Holocaust stories can only be shared by those people who lived it.

Josh Felgoise (06:23.566)

And if you're not exposed to people who are survivors in various settings at museums or in libraries or in other or even in movies, if you don't make use of those particular opportunities, the stories are only known by people who might be telling stories that are

wrong, or stories that are made up, or stories that are from various settings that are trying to make anti-Semitic statements and other statements negative to the Holocaust or even the existence of the Holocaust had happened. So that is my comment about that.

Take maybe what we're going to be talking about today as something that you can ultimately share with friends and even sitting down with family members, because in some cases there might be elements of it that have never been told to you or even shared negatively to say nothing of positively. And why do you think Holocaust education is so important?

It is so important because if there's no Holocaust education, it won't be learned by future generations. And the whole concept of the fact that a group, when there were 11 million Jewish people living in Europe during the days of 1933 to 1945, when there started out to be 11 million Jews,

and a group of people set out to kill, not kill, to murder those 11 million human beings and ultimately succeeded in murdering 6.1 million of those human beings that were being talked about so badly during that particular period of time.

Josh Felgoise (08:40.298)

Yeah, and I think your story that you told me when we first met is a great way to explain how this all happened and about your family's history. So as I said to you before, and I already said to you today, I feel so privileged to have you on to share your story and to educate people on what what happened.

So I want to give you the floor and the time to share your story and I will ask a couple questions interspersed, but we'll start from wherever you want to start from and we'll go from there. The logical start is that my grandparents were born in the 1800s. I have family members that go back on my family tree.

to the 1700s. In every case, the families were living in Germany and their religion was Judaism. I'm going to start the story more down to earth as that in 1918, World War I ends. And when World War ended on November the 11th of 19...

at 11 o'clock in the morning.

The countries that won the war, America and England and France and Russia, knew that they had defeated the country of Germany. The country of Germany fell immediately into a hyperinflation and then ultimately a depression, which affected also 65 million population of Germany.

Josh Felgoise (10:38.614)

Hyperinflation is brought to light when you realize that in 1918, when World War I ended, you could get seven German marks, M-A-R-K-S, marks for one American dollar, 13 cents. By 1923, only five years later, it took 215 trillion with a T with 12 zeros

for a trillion, German marks to make the equivalent of one American dollar. That's called hyperinflation. That is what was being faced by the 65 million population of Germany. By 1925, a group of Germans under the leadership of someone by the name of Adolf Hitler decided to change the story.

How did they change the story? They changed the story by using newspapers and posters and the radio, because there was no other way, and speeches on the radio to tell the population of Germany that the people of the country that caused World War I, which they lost, that caused the hyperinflation,

and caused the depression that followed that all these populous, this whole population was living with at that moment in 1925 and said, these people that I'm talking about were a demonic race of people. The word religion was never used by the Nazis. The German

Workers Party, National Socialist German Workers Party was the name that we now call the Nazis. And they, under Adolf Hitler, started raising these stories or these tales or these lies to get the people of Germany to start believing in them with the possibility of them sharing those tales and joining the party.

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politically and maybe ultimately joining the armed forces of Germany, which would be forming. And in 1925, when Adolf Hitler was sent to jail for being a dissident, he wrote a book. And while in jail, he wrote an infamous book called, it was My Struggle, it was Mein Kampf, My Struggle.

And in saying that, he said all the things that Germany should and would become under Nazi rule. Hitler made sure that the people, the population of Germany knew what a Jew and who a Jew was because he used the word race. He knew that the difference between one race and another was

physical characteristics. He therefore assigned, by lying, in my encumph, and he called us a demonic race. He had to assign physical characteristics to us because there really were none to differentiate the 500,000 Jews of Germany from the 65 million population. So he said all Jews had a reddish complexion

All Jews had kinky brown hair and all Jews had huge crooked noses. There was no such person, but they hired artists to paint ugly, ugly pictures that they posted all over Germany saying, these are the Jews that you should hate like we do.

did work in too many ways, but we move on in time to time for the fact that there were 30 political parties in Germany. Only one of them was the Nazi party. There was an election in 1933 and the Nazi party got the plurality.

Josh Felgoise (15:27.758)

That means they got more votes than anybody else. They got 33 % of the vote and the other 67 % of the 100 % went to those other 29 parties. And so they had nothing to say about anything. And the Nazi party took over the government. The first thing that Adolf Hitler did in 1933 to make sure that he or they knew

exactly who was Jewish. He required us Jews to, and when I say us, I was born in 1934, but my parents were born in 1902 and in 1906, and my grandparents in the 1875s. He got some punch card equipment from America, and he required all the Jews

to register. All 500,000 of us had to register with names and birth dates and addresses and everything that the Nazis might at some time need. It was unfortunate that some people think about some stories that they've heard about that all Jews had to wear a gold star, a yellow star.

But there was no such thing as a yellow star in Germany. Why? Because there didn't need to be, because we didn't need to identify ourselves on our clothes, because we were already identified in those punch cards. So that's a little known fact about recognition of who in fact was Jewish, because the physical characteristics that Hitler spoke of did not exist.

So there was no way to tell a person on the street to be Jewish by looking at them, but the party knew when they were going to need it. So here we are now in 1933 and what starts happening. The first thing was that on April the 1st, by the way, Hitler came to power in January of 1933, the very beginning of the year. April the 1st of 1933,

Josh Felgoise (17:50.732)

There is a sign put up in my one grandfather's cattle dealing business, do not buy from these Jews today. It was a one day boycott and it was put on the walls and the windows of every Jewish owned business in Germany and in Austria. It was a one day test. It was not a test of the Jews.

It was a test of the non-Jews to see who would speak up to the government of Germany or the judges of Germany or the lawyers of Germany and say, they can't do that. They shouldn't have done that to just say that you should not buy from this particular class of people who happen to be Jewish. There was none of that coming back to the Nazis. They felt that they won that particular test.

The next test was the burning of the books on May the 1st of 1933. They burnt or had burned all books of anything that had anything whatsoever to do with Jewishness or Jewish writers or even people that spoke about things Jewish. They are to be completely eliminated from the German world.

so that people wouldn't have any reference to anything that was Jewish except what Hitler was talking about. Now we're in 1934, still in 1933, my parents were married in May of 1933 and I was born in July of 1934. Hitler would have loved it if all 500,000 of us Jews would

leave. Not would die, but would leave because that would assure them they wouldn't have the the Jews still in Germany anymore blocking their way to do other things that they wanted to do other than things related to to to Jews. But it didn't happen. Many people left anyway, but not unfortunately too many. And then now or in 1935 Hitler himself

Josh Felgoise (20:18.718)

studied something that was done in America after the Civil War. He studied the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws, which had been passed against, they weren't called African Americans at the time, but they were called black or colored. And they said that these people were different and they shouldn't have votes and they shouldn't be allowed to be in school with white people.

all the things that the Jim Crow laws said, and he created a group of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of laws which the judges of Germany went along with and said they're perfectly legal, the chancellor, to be able to institute these laws. things like, if you were a child, you could no longer go to public school. If you were a child, you could no longer ride your bicycle.

If you were a child, you could no longer swim in the public swimming pool. If you were anybody who was Jewish, you could not sit on the park bench. You could no longer belong to any organizations. You could not be in any sports because in 1936 even, you know that they kept all of the Jewish athletes from being in the Olympics because they were Jewish and because it was part of the Nuremberg laws. Also included

was the fact that Jews could no longer have non-Jewish employees and non-Jewish employees could not have Jews and vice versa in every way. My father's passport was taken away, but my father's driver's license was taken away. Simple things. My mother was fired from her job as a dental hygienist because she worked for a non-Jewish dentist.

You all know, you've heard of it, dental hygienists working for a dentist, but this was specific. Nuremberg laws, she could no longer work for this wonderful man who was not a Nazi in any way, but he was not Jewish and therefore could not have her as an employee. The Nuremberg laws for someone that doesn't know what that is, can you just define who created that and what that is? Well, the Nazi government set out a set of laws

Josh Felgoise (22:43.02)

related to people who were Jewish and places that were Jewish and organizations that were Jewish and people who belonged to organizations that maybe weren't Jewish, but they themselves were Jewish. And sports people could not be Jewish sports people, children who did sports, children could no longer go to school. That was a big, big hurt.

to the population, the Jewish population of Germany. Thank you. But the family learned to live with our family, learned to live with those laws and those things that they could not do. And now we're in 19, we're going through the 19, the late 1930s and we're in now in 1938. In 1938,

My parents make a decision that they wanted to leave. The decision to leave had rarely something to do with being allowed to leave by Germany. The decision of leaving was where to go because most of the countries of the world did not want us Jewish refugees, as it were, to come into their country.

In 1938 early, people started talking about leaving. However, many, many of the, by that time there were, instead of 500,000, there may have been 300,000 Jews left in Germany. In speaking to themselves within their families and speaking to each other, so many of them unfortunately said, this Hitler thing will go away.

our good German lives will come back to where they were, our lives where they were so happy in Germany after World War I became happy again. And we will go back to being happy German Jews living in Germany with not having any anti-Semitism except for Hitler, there was basically no anti-Semitism in Germany.

Josh Felgoise (25:07.854)

I should have stated that earlier, that anti-Semitism maybe some years back when there were dukes and other kinds of people leading the country of Germany, there may have been anti-Semitism because Jews for a while could not have farmland, could not be farmers. They could certainly jobs they couldn't have. But let's get back into the 1930s. And we had no such restrictions.

until it got to be the Nuremberg laws. And now the people are still talking, Hitler will go away. But my parents said, we have cousins living in Germany, living in America. My mother's first cousin lived in America. And I didn't say at the very beginning, my other grandfather had a factory in Germany, which was making housewares.

and making housewares. My father had been educated enough that he knew how to communicate with foreign countries in their respective languages and type in these languages and so on. And so he was very much involved with that business. And fortunately, he knew how to type and he knew English. So he wrote a letter to, let me go back one half a step.

I had a cousin who could no longer go to school. And at age 12 in 1937, she was put together with that same family that I'm now talking about that ultimately sponsored us. But she sponsored, the 12-year-old was sponsored to come because the father had been killed and the mother didn't want to leave Germany. And so the 12-year-old

went to America and became one of their children. Now, we're back to 1938. There's the contact made and my mother and father went to the American embassy and they were told, here is a form called the Affidavit of Support. You must get the people in America to create this form, get some letters saying that you

Josh Felgoise (27:32.942)

your family of three are good people and would make good American citizens, and you would turn those papers into the American's embassy and we would see. My mother got permission to get on a ship and go to America just to get those forms. And she went there on a, she got to Chicago on April the 17th of 1938 and went to the family in Chicago.

And it happened to be the first night of Passover on that particular year and told around the Passover table what was going on in Germany as best. My father knew English a lot better than my mother who had had some school English and explained what was going on with regard to. And but she said it in a whisper. She talked with a whisper and she had pulled the shades of this house in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

of Chicago pulled the shades as she walked in because that's the way they were living their lives under Hitler after the Nuremberg Law, certainly, and after 33 that he came to power. The concern of living under Hitler and the fact that it wasn't going away and they had to do something about it for themselves, our particular family, and they also asked for permission for my two sets of grandparents and a set of cousins.

to also be sponsored. Now, that's where the story really begins to take shape. Because my mother took all the documents in May, took all that time to get all the documents together by the cousin living in Chicago that was able to do these things. He was an insurance executive and he was able to put down the right things that the American government wanted to know.

about his well-being and status so that he could speak for us. And all that worked fine. She turned in all the paperwork in May and we waited. Sometime during the summer of 1938, we got a letter from the American Embassy that said, your number has been called. Why was there even such a thing as a number? The number was not created.

Josh Felgoise (29:57.88)

back in the days of the 1933 punch cards. If the pile of things in the embassy, if I can use my hands, if the pile of those forms in the embassy was that high, and it probably was to the ceiling, there were thousands and thousands of these yellow forms. But the number of visas that the American government had given to the German

the American ambassador in Germany, it may have been this many visas. How were they going to fairly distribute these according to this small group? And fortunately, the ambassador came up with a lottery. He assigned numbers to every one of the forms. They had a fair way of pulling

them out in some way and only the numbers that were pulled became candidates for visas. And the candidates for visas then were contacted like my parents were and they were told to be at the American Embassy to get our visas on of all the dates that they chose on November the 10th, 1938.

I will get to November the 10th, 1938 in a moment because it becomes a very significant part of this, putting together this story of how a small German Jewish family ultimately got out of Germany and into America. was the eighth, now it's the eighth of November and we got to Berlin. We moved into a hotel and moving into a hotel,

which was still okay to do because this is 1938 now, 8th of November, supposed to be at the embassy on the 10th. And now it's the 9th of November. And we were looking out of our hotel room window and we see flames. What was burning? But we knew that we were on a street that had a synagogue. And the synagogue was coincidentally

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across the street from our hotel. It was the Prinz Bergenchenstrasse Synagogue. In those days, synagogues were named from the street that they were on, not the Hebrew kind of names that synagogues now are really called in America and other parts of the world. And so we knew that there was something going on. We didn't know what was totally going on, but parenthetically I could say,

that 1,400 synagogues were burned to the ground that particular night throughout Germany and Austria. How were we affected by that, except seeing it out of the hotel room window? It's still the 9th of November. It's my parents and my mother and I in the hotel. Back in our home in Gotá, empty of people, except for a teenage girl who was Jewish,

and you could only have Jewish employees. So she was Jewish and she was a young teenager and she had been given instructions of a couple of times. The people that are listening in, they can talk about every babysitting or anything like that. They're given instructions as to what to do and what not to do. And to the door on that night of November the 9th comes the Gestapo. And the Gestapo,

says to the teenage girl, where is Herr Rehbach? Our names were certainly on the cards. On the card. There were only men between 16 and 60. 30,000. 30,000 men. They were picked out of these cards or the card sorting equipment, pulled out the 16 to 60 age people. And that's the cards that the Gestapo was ordered to carry around. Asked her

Where is Herr Rehbach? She could have said, anyone, what's that? Your dad. My dad, Herr Rehbach. My name is Rehbach by last name, Rehbach, Herr Rehbach, Mr. Rehbach. And she could have said many lies about, he's on a trip or whatever. And each of those answers would have been questioned by the smart Gestapo to get more details. But she was smart enough to say,

Josh Felgoise (34:48.334)

I don't know. And they left. They immediately, my father, my, she picked up the telephone and made a call to my father in the hotel room, because she knew what that number was, of course, and that room in that hotel. And also knowing that every phone in Germany was tapped. She could not say they came for you tonight, herrebe.

she only could say something that she and my father had put together as a coded message just in case they had no idea what might happen that night of November the 9th. But in case something would happen, call me and tell me the words, the English lesson has been canceled, which is perfectly okay to have spread that to ears hearing that might have made something of that.

which would have reflected badly on my father. He knew by that message that he should not come home again, not knowing what had happened, but knowing he should not come home again. Now it's November the 10th and a sign goes up in the hotel, no Jews allowed after the 9th of November, 1938, which now has a different name than just 9th of November, 1938, which I'll talk about in a moment.

We knew we couldn't go back to that hotel again for another night, if it's going to be so. We're now in the embassy on the 10th and all day long there's paperwork, paperwork, paperwork and stamping and stamping and stamping. And a clerk comes up to my parents and me and says, we're sorry, we're not finished, come back tomorrow. What was tomorrow? What was the date tomorrow?

The date tomorrow was November the 11th. What happened on November the 11th of 1918? World War ended. Therefore, November 11th ever since then has been called First Armistice Day, armistice meaning arms, guns, and now called Veterans Day, which many of you young men that are hearing know about Veterans Day, is the November the 11th of every year.

Josh Felgoise (37:15.222)

since 1918. And so the embassy was what? It was closed. It was a holiday. So my parents are standing at the gate with me and said, we were told to come back today. Now I sometimes tell the story that you teachers in the room, please, the next time that there's Veterans Day off and your kids are going to go tomorrow to the mall, please tell them why.

because very possibly that clerk that said, back tomorrow, had no memory of the fact that the next day was going to be a holiday for her or a day off from her. anyway, we were there, Lockgate, a Marine Guard. Marine Guards are responsible for the protection of every embassy of America throughout the world. They are guarded.

because the footprint of every embassy of the world, every American embassy, is the footprint of that country. So anybody would say, well, there was Nazis at the gate. No, because that was still American property. And therefore the Marine Guard went into the town of Berlin, found the ambassador on his day off, brought the ambassador who's willing to come back, came back, opened the gate for us, and issued

our visas to get into America. Now we've got to get out of Germany. My father immediately, the war has not begun yet, that's 1939, it's still 1938. My father was able to take an airplane and go to England because he had the proper paperwork and he could get to England to be with an uncle of his.

waiting for me and my mother to hopefully get there. It was our responsibility then to, my mother and I, to pack up our belongings in order to ship them to America. Here's an interesting twist. All the stories that you have all heard and seen and told about and in movies, you realize that the people in, other than in Germany, that

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were overrun by the Nazis. The people were seen with one suitcase. The people were seen with one suitcase that even ultimately was taken away when they got into the camps and what they may have carried to the ghettos that they were assigned to. But in Germany, we had one good thing that the German government did. They needed money. They

needed money to build the equipment that they were building for the war that they were going to ultimately be starting very soon. So they said to all the Jewish, the German Jews, if you want to leave our country, give up all of your money except for $4. You can leave for America with $4. Give us everything else.

No jewelry can be taken. We get all the jewelry, everything that has value. paint things, whatever you might have, we take over. But you can take away everything else that was worth the amount that you're giving us. And thank goodness, but the man in Chicago that had sponsored us made arrangements for a container, which we call a container today.

It was called a lift van in those days. And my mother and I were responsible because my father was already in England. And here we are in getting ready for December when our ship was going to leave England. But it was still November as we left the embassy with our visas. And my mother was a wonderful packer. And we were allowed to take all of our dishes and all of our pots and pans and all of our

furniture, everything, everything, my toys, including an electric train set, which my father had used the last of his money, German money, to buy so that I would have a wonderful toy to play with once I got to America. He was very thoughtful, even though I had old toys and blocks and so on that were all packed away into this thing and shipped and got to America even before

Josh Felgoise (42:05.646)

we did because the seas were not being blown up yet. I mean, it was just an incredible coincidence of time and timing that this November the 9th thing happened. There were 91 people that were killed on the night of November 9th, one of whom was my uncle because he was a wounded war veteran from World War I, and he was the father

of the young teenage girl that was sent to Chicago at age 12. And he didn't move quickly enough, even after showing the fact that he was a wounded war veteran on a pension from the German government. He was on the card and therefore he was arrested, but he didn't move quickly enough and he was kicked down the stairs. And he was one of the 91 people that happened to be killed that night. And somebody would say, only 91?

Well, 30,000 were arrested and 91 were killed. Now, back to us. The things were packed up. My father was safely in England. It was now my mother and my turn to leave. Now, already we have the man in Chicago that saved us by doing the paperwork. If you know the Anne Frank story, the Anne Frank's father had asked a family in

America to sponsor the Frank family to get out of Germany before they went to Holland. And that family, unfortunately, was not felt not physically and emotionally and money capable of saying yes. And they said no. And that's what ultimately happened to the Frank family because they didn't get saved. And there's early on days where that would have been impossible.

So now we're at the train station. We're at the train station at the Dutch border. A man comes up to my mother and taps her on the shoulder and said, don't believe the people that said you're going to get onto the next train. Don't listen to them. Listen to me. We don't know if he was Jewish, but we know he was a Dutchman. He lived across the border in Holland.

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which was still a free country. Holland wasn't overrun until 1940. We're still 1938. He maybe did this every day to save people. I don't know. But he said, follow me when I give the signal. And he gave the signal and he knew that there was a Dutch bound train on the Dutch free side of the station, no longer Germany.

no longer under the control of the guys with the guns. And he knew the exact moment the train was gonna leave the station. And we didn't, and he just didn't have us follow him until that time was getting just to the moment of the doors were gonna close. My mother and I were with a little bag because remember we could only take out $4. So we had no suitcases or anything. And therefore we got on that train.

And off we went to the English Channel to cross the English Channel to get into England to meet up with my father that was waiting for us at that place. And we then took the boat with my father on that particular day of December the 15th of 1938. That's my in Germany story. And then there could be a little more said about

arriving in America if Josh wants me to do that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think you're an incredible storyteller and I'm enthralled by what you're saying. I think you're explaining the start. And I don't think you referred to it as crystal knocked yet, have you? No, no. Good, good. That night, aha, that night that I said 91 people were killed and I said there were 1400 synagogues and 30,000 men were

But there were also thousands of Jewish-owned store windows that were broken and stores that were broken into. It was nighttime. November 9th and 10th were used. They didn't go over to November 11th. It was only the night of the 9th and early during the, and still in the darkness of the 10th. There was glistening crystals of the glass that was broken in the store windows on the sidewalks.

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with the shining of the lights, the street lights. And it should also have said that all the burning synagogues, the reason that they burned to the ground was the Nazi laws that had been set for that night was that no fire department, no fire hose should be used to put a drop, a single drop of water on one of these Jewish places.

or one of these Jewish synagogues. If there was anything nearby that was not Jewish, it was perfectly okay to put out those fires that may have spread from the other places. But back to the glistening on the streets. The government of Germany assigned a name to that night, Kristallnacht, crystal night. The word crystal is strictly the word glass.

in Germany. So it was glistening glass. But the way it said Kristallnacht, crystal night, it gives an imagery of crystal chandeliers, beautiful things called crystal, crystal goblets and crystal glassware and so on. There was nothing beautiful about that particular night. And now that the German government has changed the name,

of Kristallnacht, November 9th and 10th of 1938 to the November pogrom. The word pogrom means riot. Therefore, in English, it was the November riot. And that is a clearer definition of what happened that night against everything Jewish and everyone Jewish and the luckiness of us back

to the man, the teenage girl that didn't give us up, the fact that our number was pulled, also a matter of luck, Marine guards, a guard that took upon us the concern that we were given wrong information, then the ambassador that took us in even on the 11th of November and gave us our, and then now there's the man at the train station that saved us out of Germany.

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and into Holland and then into England. On the ship, my parents told me and basically said to each other, we are going to be Americans. We are no longer going to be speaking German. And my name is Rolf at the time, R-O-L-F, it's now Ralph, Rolf Max, my grandfather's name. You are going to learn English and you're going to go to an American school.

You're four years old now. We are told that the American kindergarten started age five. You will be in an American kindergarten at age five. And that is in fact what happened. We got very, very close to that American family that did not know a word of German, but communication. We joined their particular synagogue and did live their particular American life.

even though some of our cousins that even were saved by the same man, continued their German-ness and chose to continue their German-ness even in the city of Chicago. And that's where we were in the Hyde Park neighborhood, city of Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood, known by the Museum of Science and Industry and known by the University of Chicago. That's the Hyde Park neighborhood.

that was inhabited very often by German speaking. Even before wartime, there were a lot of German speaking people and Jewish that moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood, which was pretty close to the downtown area of Chicago as far as transportation was concerned. And our lives, I to this day have

a wife of 68 years, I have with spouses, with spouses, cetera, 10 grandchildren, five great grandchildren. And by saying about five great grandchildren, ages 10 and eight and four and two and

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less than one, Hitler did not win as far as we were concerned. We were the lucky ones in so many ways, but recognize that the stories need to be told at every level. The people that were in the camps, the people that were first in the the ghettos before they were moved to the camps.

the people that ultimately were in the camps, there were concentration camps, and then the death marches. And then some got back to Germany alive and met spouses and so on. And the camps had been established for survivors in Germany. Those things started happening and those people started coming to America.

in the actually in the fifties, we came here in 1938, almost 1939. So many people didn't come here until the fifties and they did not tell their stories. My mother did not tell this story in detail until well into the eighties. I even as a good student and university student and everything else,

An engineer, so many things I would love to ask her today. People that ask me questions when I speak, like, whatever happened to the teenage girl? One thing to say about the man in Chicago. The man in Chicago, one day when he was in his 80s, he was in his 30s when he saved us. In his 80s, he called me to have lunch with him. I was in my 40s. He said, Ralph?

I know I saved your family. I know, and you know that I know. And we're very happy that that was the case and your grandparents. What has been bothering me is, is he talking. What's been bothering me that if I only knew what was going on in Germany during those days, I could have saved hundreds or even thousands. If I only had known beyond

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what your father had written to me. Because the American government wasn't talking. We know that to be so. The American government was not telling the people of America what had been going on in those early days before the war actually began. And certainly not during the days of the Holocaust, which didn't end until 1945. Little, little, little was known until survivors started talking. And that was sometime

in the, not just the fifties, but when in the nineties, when some Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, which is where we built our museum. The Nazis wanted, the neo-Nazis wanted to march. That's when the survivors that had left Europe in the fifties after suffering through the thirties.

They said, we cannot not tell our stories. We must have a place, a museum to show whatever we brought with us, the little we brought with us and be able to tell our stories to school kids and so on. And that's what we've been doing ever since from the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Ralph, I feel so lucky to be

someone who can help share your story. Thank you for sharing all of that. What you just said at the end reminded me a lot of the scene in the movie Schindler's List, which I implore everyone to go watch when Schindler breaks down at the end and says I could have saved more people. And that's that really struck me when you just said that. And thank you for sharing that story and sharing your whole experience.

I feel so lucky to be able to have you on here to talk to you today to have a relationship with you or I can continue to learn more from you. I hope to meet you in person sometime. And yeah, I think this was amazing. And I think the way I wanted to say while you were telling this, the way you told this story was so different than I've heard it before.

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was so meaningful and impactful because the way that this started isn't told a lot. It's something that I didn't really know personally. And getting to hear that from your perspective is so meaningful and so helpful and educational. So I'm proud to have this episode, to be able to share this with people. And thank you so much for being here. And I'm so glad to have been able to share this story. And I look forward to...

seeing it and I'm so pleased that you contacted me and wanting to do this at all. And it's the first podcast of my 90 years, literally. I'm so proud to be that podcast. Not only the first one I've told, but I've never seen and looked at or watched a podcast to this moment. I'm so excited to put it out. And I'm putting this episode out around Yom HaShoah.

Can you please tell everybody what Yom HaShoah is, what it means to you, what it means to the Jewish community? Right. A couple of days ago, January 27th was considered International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27th of January of every year for 80 years, because the Russian government

liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp on that particular day, and here it is 80 years later. And that's why it's become internationally Holocaust Remembrance Day. In April, there is a day that has been set aside as Holocaust Remembrance Day in various parts of the world as well. Not directly related to

that Auschwitz event, but the fact that memories need to be shared of the Holocaust and what we're talking about here today is so important to be underscored on that particular day when stories are being told. Yom HaShoah means the word Yom is the Hebrew word for day.

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Yom. You've all heard of Yom Kippur? That's the Day of Atonement Day. Yom. Ha-shoah. The word, the prefix ha means the. And shoah is the Hebrew word that was given to holocaust. Holocaust meant at the beginning of death by fire. That is the Greek word holocaustus.

which is what created the word Holocaust. Now in Hebrew, Yom HaShoah has taken over from, I mean, it's also being used, the Holocaust, but Yom HaShoah is the day of remembering the events which we call the Shoah, the Holocaust. And we also putting it in perspective from what I talked about,

We say, many people say, and many grandparents say to us, well, Holocaust didn't begin until the war began, no? Holocaust began in 1933 when Hitler became chancellor on January the 20th of 1933. That was the beginning of the Holocaust. If it wouldn't have been for him,

there would be no this conversation going on. So it started in 1933 and it ended only in 1945 when the war, when World War II officially ended. 33 to 45. That was super helpful. Thank you so much. And thank you so much again. I look forward to people hearing this conversation.

I think it's even more meaningful that it's coming out around Yom HaShoah because of what you said about sharing stories about the Holocaust and remembering why it is so important that we educate and share on this topic. thank you can just underscore what I said very early on. Get your stories from your families. And one thing that's if and when anyone in your family talks in a way

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that might make you not think anymore that what they might be saying about anti-Semitism, there might not be the truth to anti-Semitism that they might be giving you, and therefore, hopefully, you will no longer participate in or accept your fellow citizens, which, and today, is anti-Semitic, and it's called Semitic, not Semitic. Semitic,

anti-Semitic things are being told today in a much greater amount than years and years and years since the actual anti-Semitism reached its peak, which was the Holocaust. But today it's happening again. So be everything you can be that cannot share and spread any more of that. Thank you.

That is the episode I I'm gonna try and do this ending right now because I'm still here with you I am so taken aback by that episode I As Ralph said at the end I got the idea for this episode around Holocaust Remembrance Day Which was a couple weeks ago when I'm recording this now and I wanted to release this now around Yom HaShoah because I think it's so impactful to do

as he said, share stories of these people and share the messages and share the important things that our generation doesn't really talk about, getting to share this story and this type of education with you guys and with myself, he said a lot of things in there I didn't know, honestly. I've been to Holocaust memorials. I've been to museums. I've watched the movies and

In the show notes, I will have below books to read movies to watch things to do. If you want to stay educated, I'll have a link to his Illinois Holocaust Museum and just some other resources as well. If you want to read a book, if this inspired you further, I highly recommend the book Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. I think it's one of the greatest books I've read. It's a highly regarded book and it's by a Holocaust survivor as well named Victor Frankel, of course.

Josh Felgoise (01:03:52.108)

I also highly recommended watching the movie Schindler's List. I just watched it myself for the first time like two years ago. I couldn't really get myself to watch it, but it was one of the most impactful movies I've seen ever. So I highly recommend that too. Wow, what an amazing conversation. I'm so happy to put this out. I feel really grateful to have had that with him, to know him and just to be connected in this way to my Jewish roots, my background and

And I'm really proud of this episode in this conversation. So thank you so much for listening. If you would like to share a message with Ralph after hearing this, as he said at the end, he wants to hear feedback. So please send me an email at josh at guyset.com j o s h at guyset.com or to my DMs on Instagram at the guyset.

You can also send me a message on my website, guyset.com, guiset.com. At the bottom, there's like an ask me anything section. I will get an email with that feedback immediately. So those are three places you can give me a message for him and I will get that over to him. He'll be so grateful for those messages. So thank you for doing that in advance.

Thank you so much. Listen to guys said a guy's guide to what should be talked about. I'm Josh. I'm 24 years old and I'm here every single week every single Tuesday to talk about what should be talked about for guys in their 20s. If you like this episode I really hope you did please like subscribe to this podcast five stars leave review that's one two three four five stars not four not three not two no one five stars. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. If you have anything you want to talk about that should be talked about guys in the 20s send to my email it's Josh at guys it dot com or my DMS on Instagram at the guy said T H E G U Y S E T.

and I'll be sure to talk about it. You can head over to guyset.com, G-U-Y-S-E-T.com for so much more content for the latest edition of my magazine, Guyset, for more blog stuff, more blog posts on all the topics I talk about, health, wellness, dating, lifestyle, career, confidence, insecurity, all that is over there on the website and on my Instagram, the guyset. Thank you so much, listen to Guyset, a guy's guide to what should be talked about, and I will see you guys next Tuesday for the 100th episode of Guyset.

Josh Felgoise (01:06:02.252)

See you guys.