Oscar Scherzer

Under Swastika and the French Flag Oscar Scherzer

FOREWORD While living illegally in Paris as an eighteen year old refugee from Hitler Germany, I decided to put on paper my experiences in Germany in 1933 and those in Vienna in 1938. In a sequel I also put into my memoirs the story of my life in France from August 1938 until July 1939. In 1940, Harvard University asked people who had been living in Germany before and after 1933 to send their experiences to the University's Department of Psychology. It was to be a 'contribution to our understanding of the National Socialist Revolution.' I sent my typewritten memoirs to Harvard University and received an acknowledgment from Professor Dr. Gordon W. Allport. In his letter he thanked me for my genuine contribution to social science. He also enlisted me to cooperate further by participating in discussions with a senior student at Radcliffe College who was to analyze the material at hand. Approximately sixty years later, Miss Sylke Bartmann, located me through the Internet. She contacted me and asked me to grant her an interview regarding my memoirs. She was a German national, attending Harvard University and studying for her Doctorate in Education. She was given my memoirs as a foundation of her studies of the Holocaust. She traveled from Cambridge, MA. to Croton on Hudson, NY, where I reside with my wife. Sylke was a guest in our home for two days. She tape recorded her interview with me and also viewed my testimony to the Shoah Foundation, sponsored by Mr. Steven Spielberg. This spring I decided to translate my memoirs which were written in German into English. I did this for the benefit of my wife, my children, my sons-in-law, my grandchildren, my many friends and all those who are interested in the story of a survivor of the Holocaust. Oscar Scherzer Croton on Hudson, N. Y.