Two Siblings, One Journey to Uruguay – Alexia M. Orengo-Green

In this blog, 2024 Lev Student Research Fellow Alexia M. Orengo-Green reflects on two siblings’ accounts of their migration.

In November 1938 after Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the Mogendorff family separated to facilitate their escape from Nazi Germany. A couple of days after Kristallnacht, Fritz (18 years old) took his sister Hanna (11 years old) and their cousin Heinz (12 years old) from Verden, Germany, across the border into the Netherlands. Prior to their separation the family had already begun the process of acquiring the necessary documentation to travel to Uruguay to meet with Ida’s brother, Siegmund Katz, who already resided there. After their third attempt, Hanna and Heinz entered the Netherlands where they were separated. It was not until the night before Hanna left for Uruguay, 26 January 1940, when the entire family would reunite again to embark on their journey together.

My dissertation investigates the experiences of children like Fritz, Ernst, and Hanna who escaped Nazi Germany during the Holocaust with or without their parents and went to Latin America. During the migrations, children took on a new role as linguistic and cultural intermediaries between their European families and their Latin American host countries. Contrary to previous views, Jewish children’s new position within their families and communities demonstrates that as migrants, they had agency and were not merely following their elder’s instructions.

Having two older siblings myself, I wanted to use part of my residency at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research (CAGR) to understanding how siblings spoke about their escape from Nazi Germany. I was particularly interested in how age impacted their experiences, the role of gender, and the similarities and differences between family members’ narratives. After watching Hanna’s interview and hearing her mention her brothers Fritz and Ernst, I decided to search if any of her siblings had also done an oral interview with the Shoah Foundation. To my surprise, her oldest brother Fritz and her cousin Heinz had also done interviews a few months after Hanna in 1997. Unfortunately, her brother Ernst did not give an interview about his experiences during the Holocaust. While Fritz arrived in Uruguay at twenty-years old, putting him outside of my scope of research, I still decided to watch his interview to see how as a young adult he experienced his migration and acculturation in Uruguay in comparison to his teenage sister. In this short piece I shed light on some of the instances in which Hanna and Fritz’s testimonies complement or contradict each other.

In their interviews, Hanna and Fritz state that their parents stayed behind in Germany after they and their brother Ernst escaped to the Netherlands to attempt sell as much of their property as possible before their upcoming journey to Uruguay. However, the siblings’ explanation as to why they were separated differs. With a soft voice and nostalgic eyes, Hanna said to her interviewer, “What do parents do? They think first of their children. As I was the youngest and since we had family in the Netherlands, they thought that we should go to the Netherlands.” (Hanna Fritzler, Interview 30690. Interview by Judith Nancy Gociol, July 5, 1997. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, USC Shoah Foundation Collection, Tape 2, Segment 34-35, 4:50-5:18/29:41.) When asked why he and his siblings were separated in his interview, Fritz shook his head and stated, “I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t tell you. I left shortly after. Why? Or how? I don’t remember.” (Fritz Mogendorff, Interview 39422. Interview by Lia Adela Mlodzieniec de Vinocur. September 28, 1997. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, USC Shoah Foundation Collection, Tape 2, Segment 55, 26:58-27:18/28:34.) The differences in their responses reflect how their age impacted how they experienced and remembered their family’s separation. While Fritz did not remember precisely why his sister left before the rest of them, Hanna’s response acknowledged her positionality and role within the family. As the youngest child Hanna’s parents saw her as the most vulnerable and hence, the first one that had to leave. Later in her interview, Hanna shares that her parents did not share a lot of information with her but Hanna’s explanation about her family’s separation demonstrates that she was actively aware of what was happening to her family and her role within it.

During their interviews, the Mondergoff siblings spoke extensively about the harsh economic difficulties that their family faced upon their arrival in Uruguay. Both Hanna and Fritz described that after living in Uruguay for some time, their father took a loan of 2,500 pesos to buy a dairy machine. Hanna mentioned that the family began selling milk, which helped them as their milk processing business grew. Fritz described that he used to deliver the milk to customers and alluded to his brother Ernst’s brief contributions. Fritz does not mention Hanna’s participation in the family dairy business. We do not know if Hanna did or did not actually aid in the business as her interviewer did not ask her if she participated even though based on the experiences of other Jewish child refugees, she most likely did. Since Hanna was a young girl at the time of her migration, her interviewer assumed that she did not contribute. The resulting interview may well obscure a part of Hanna’s experience. Fritz’s narration mentions that Ernst, who was just a year older than Hanna, helped in the business. The lack of Hanna’s mention could show she either did not help or that in comparison to Ernst she did not participate in the same extent. Either way, the fact that we know that Ernst did contribute to the family dairy business demonstrates that for young Jewish boy refugees, there was the expectation that they would financially contribute to the household. The absence of Hanna within the family dairy business in both of the interviews reveals the gendered nature of the experiences of child refugees, even in the silences presented by the archive.

One of the most pivotal moments in Hanna and Fritz’s interviews is when their interviewers asked them about their acculturation in Uruguay. With a smile and short laugh, Hanna said, “My father always [missed Germany]. We adapted, as we were younger, we adapted but it was quite difficult for my father and mother. My father never adapted.” (Tape 2, Segment 55, 25:25-25:39/29:41) Rather than speaking on her individual experience of acculturation, in her response, Hanna spoke for all of her siblings. Hanna’s response implied that Fritz and Ernst had the same perspective as her when engaging with Uruguay.

Rather than telling his interviewer that he acculturated as Hanna had expressed in her interview, Fritz said sternly, “For me personally, acclimation for me didn’t exist. Because I still—it seems false but even after everything I think about the old Frieden. And I cannot get use to the Uruguayan way.” (Tape 3, Segment 75, 18:13-18:37/29:19) Contrary to Hanna, Fritz is careful to explicitly speak on his experience as he also does not expand on his parents’ acculturation. While in other interviews older teenagers and young adults express that they acculturated, Fritz’s interview stands out because he admits that he did not. Fritz’s views on his acculturation create a distance between him and Uruguay that is contrasted with his decision of conducting his interview in Spanish rather in German. This juxtaposition illustrated in his interview highlights the complexities of his identity. Fritz could have chosen to conduct the interview in German, his native language, but chose instead to speak in Spanish, suggesting that he did in fact acculturate sometime after his migration to Uruguay. The responses of Hanna and Fritz highlight that the siblings had varying definitions of what acculturation meant for them.

This brief snapshot of the shared experiences of the Mogendorff siblings from the Shoah Foundation archives highlights the different perspectives on migration held by members of the same family. While it would have been great to also have Ernst’s perspective on his journey and life in Uruguay, we only see small glimpses of his experiences from his siblings’ testimonies. Hanna and Fritz’s interviews complement each other, filling gaps in the other’s narrative and providing an extra level of depth to their shared experience of migration. Analyzed together, their interviews emphasize that it is important to not disregard the interviews of those who experienced the Holocaust as children, as those interviews, such as Hanna’s, provide a particular point of view that demonstrate that children were aware and participated.

Note: Both Hanna and Fritz’s interviews were conducted in Spanish. All the quotes included in this piece were translated from the Spanish to English by the author.