Bernie Rose, Interviews with Jews in Utah, Accn 998

Page 74

Rose (1/25/83) page 2 ~r. K Mr. !1 I t hought, well, here's my chance to get a crack at Hitler. All we could d o wa s watch ~ itler, I mean, read about Hitler not watch Hitler. After ell, you've got to be a world figure or you've got to be there to watch Hitler, and all I knew about Hitler was what I saw in the movies or saw in the papers or magazines. All I knew was that there was a figure over there with growing resentment, and what the hell can you do about the situation here? Nothing. Did you try to talk to other people? Do you remember having con-versations with people about your feelings? Oh, I think it was a subject of conversation among Jews all over. Of course, they all resented it. Some of the attitudes were that it will oass. Everything passes, and that's going to go,too. Then there were others who felt like me in the sense of frustration, But what was happen until 1t passes •• I don't believe anybody ever dreat ed that it would go to the excess that 1t did. I don't believe anybody ever dreamed that. You had every shade of opjinion from those who would turn their backs on it to those people who would bow to it and say it would pass to the others who would sit there and bite their ringernails because what else could you do except q}'r.ir bite your fingernails? The feelings aboutjthe damn Jews over in Germany were doing; they were standing by and taking it. Therr was an awful lot of that feeling. To our discredit there were some peo~le that said it couldn't happen to nicer Jews than the German Jews. Of course, in the final analysis there's always a something between the German Jew and the Russian Jew and the Polish Jew, or whatever you want to call them, there was certainly a divided difference between them.