Fred Amram was born in September 1933 in Hanover, Germany. His father was a peddler in the textile trade. He sold textiles to the women in the area. His father had a fourth-grade education and then he was an apprentice in the textile industry. His mother finished high school. His parents met in Hanover. His mother worked in her uncle’s butcher shop. She was a housewife until they came to the United States. Most of the buildings were four stories. There were shops on the first floors of the buildings, and the rest of the floors were apartments. His mother took him to the park every day growing up. Jewish children were not allowed to go to public school at the time, so Amram’s grandmother was teaching him. There were words on the bench at the park that stated only for Jews. This upset his mother. They would look in the shop windows. When they went back to the park, all the benches had words on them. The other benches said only for Aryans. This is when Amram understood having his own bench was not cool. The year after that, Jews could not use the park at all. The year after that, the Jews were being hauled off to camps [Annotator’s Note: Concentration camps].

Fred Amram was born in September 1933 in a Christian hospital. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] became chancellor in January 1933. By the time Amram was born in September, the Jewish hospital was closed and Jewish women could not use the public hospital. There was a convent where the nuns took in Jewish women so they could have healthy babies. His birth certificate is signed by a mother superior. After eight days, he was circumcised. The ceremony is called a bris. Among Orthodox Jews, there is a blessing for everything. There was band music outside their window. His uncle Max survived the war and became one of his favorite relatives. There were soldiers marching and crowds in the street. There was a man sitting in the back of a limousine and he shouted “Heil Hitler” [Annotator’s Note: meaning “hail Hitler”], and the crowd responded with the same phrase. Hitler had come to his bris. Amram likes to say there were two butchers at his bris [Annotator’s Note: Amram becomes emotional.]

Fred Amram talks about his family members' names starting with the letter M. In 1801, Napoleon [Annotator’s Note: Napoleon Bonaparte, a French military and political leader] came through Germany. At this time many Jews did not have surnames. Napoleon wanted all Jews to have surnames. Cantor Moses knew in the Bible that Moses’ father’s name was Amram, and he wanted to be Moses, son of Amram. This was the first of the Amrams in Germany. Since then, every firstborn son has had the name Moses or a name that started with the letter M. At the same time, Jews in Italy had to wear yellow hats. When Napoleon went to Italy he did away with the yellow hats.

Fred Amram remembers going to the park. His parents talked about their experiences. He has a memory of being hungry. His mother bribed the milkman because Jews did not have a large milk ration. He remembers the ice cream store. His father worked and was earning a good living. Jews could not use the trolley. His grandmother used to take him to the zoo on the trolley. One day, they went to the ice cream store, and the owner told them they could no longer serve Jews. The stores had the letter J on them to show they were Jewish merchants. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] wanted the German people to boycott the Jewish merchants. His mother talked about it all the time. She had lost two sisters to the camps [Annotator’s Note: concentration camps]. She became very bitter. She hated the Nazis, and after the war, they were still Nazis. His mother was appalled that he drove a German car. Amram remembers Kristallnacht [Annotator’s Note: the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9 and 10 November 1938]. It was the night that about a thousand synagogues [Annotator’s Note: Jewish houses of worship] were burned throughout Germany and Austria. Amram saw the smoke from their synagogue burning. The Hanover [Annotator’s Note: Hanover, Germany] synagogue was completed in 1868. He watched it burning. He remembers people being pulled out of their homes and beaten on the streets. It was terrifying. About seven-thousand Jewish shops were broken into and looted. He remembers the RAF (the Royal Air Force) bombing. He remembers the air raid sirens and going to the basement. He played in the air raid shelter with other children. One night they went to the air raid shelter and there was a sign on the door that said Jews forbidden. They watched the airplanes from their window. The other neighbors in their building started to avoid them. His mother went out on the balcony and said it was okay if a bomb dropped on the building, if they cannot live with the Jews let them die with the Jews.

Fred Amram remembers the Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] came regularly. Jews could not have radios. They searched the apartment for radios and took their radio. Each time, their first question was where their father war. His father would hide under the bed of a family who lived on the second floor. One time the Gestapo came and they found the storeroom where his father kept his textiles and they emptied it. Ultimately, they found his father and they put him into forced labor, an alternative to the camps [Annotator’s Note: concentration camps]. People who had a skill were used to do various jobs. His father was put into road construction and was allowed to go home every night. If he did not return the next day, he would be arrested and sent to a camp and they would take his family as well. Amram had the sense that he was the man of the house at age six. When the Gestapo came, he would beat his mother to the door and answer the door. He felt a huge responsibility. His father was in road construction and digging trenches.

Fred Amram remembers seeing the words “only for Jews” on a bench at a park. The letter J was on the shops owned by Jews. His father said it would pass. His mother wanted to leave immediately. During the early days, they [Annotator’s Note: the Nazis] only came after the men. The problem was that countries had quotas on how many Jews they would let in. Family members were writing letters in the 1940s about where they could go. When his father was hauled away to do slave labor, he decided they needed to leave. Towards the end of 1939, they left one night. Amram was six years old. They went to Amsterdam, Holland to his mother’s sister’s home. They lived there briefly. Through the HIAS [Annotator’s Note: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society], they were able to get help to go to the United States. Amram had to learn Dutch. They left Holland and went to Belgium. From Belgium, they took a boat to the United States. In the 1940s when Germany took over Holland, they treated the Jews the same as the German Jews. His aunt, uncle, and cousin were killed in the Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp complex in German-occupied Oswiecim, Poland] gas chamber. Amram is the only child of his generation and one of the only ones in his family to survive the war.

Fred Amram rFred Amram remembers being on an ocean liner when they left Belgium. The trip was eventful for him. The trip was turbulent because they had to avoid submarines and sea storms. Almost everyone on the ship was seasick. Amram got to hang out with the crew. They taught him English words and gave him an American toy truck. He got to maneuver the toy truck through the ship. When they landed, they were in New York. They each had a suitcase. They arrived on 5 November 1939 at four o’clock in the morning. His father wanted him to be able to see the Statue of Liberty [Annotator’s Note: a colossal sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, New York] as they entered the harbor. His father took him out on the deck and they looked at the Statue of Liberty. His father said some words in Hebrew about freedom. The essence was, “free at last”. [Annotator’s Note: Amram becomes emotional.] They were living in a New York City tenement. It was April and it was warm in the city. They had food provided by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His father was singing the prayers. Amram’s memoir is called We Are in America Now.emembers being on an ocean liner when they left Belgium. The trip was eventful for him. The trip was turbulent because they had to avoid submarines and sea storms. Almost everyone on the ship was seasick. Amram got to hang out with the crew. They taught him English words and gave him a toy truck that was American. He got to maneuver the toy truck through the ship. When they landed they were in New York. They each had a suitcase. They arrived on 5 November 1939 at 4 AM. His father wanted him to be able to see the Statue of Liberty [Annotator’s Note: The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States] as they entered the harbor. His father took him out on the deck and they looked at the Statue of Liberty. His father said some words in Hebrew about freedom. The essence was free at last. [Annotator’s Note: Amram becomes emotional]. They were living in a New York City tenement. It was April and it was warm in the city. They had food provided by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His father was singing the prayers. Amram’s memoir is called We Are in America Now.

Fred Amram remembers they were changing peoples’ names to Americanize them in 1939. There was a man with a pad and he asked his father for his name. The man changed his father’s name to Milton and changed Amram’s name from Mannfred to Fred. The man changed his mother’s name to Sarah. His mother became hysterical. In 1938, all Jews had to adopt a middle name. All men took the middle name Israel and all the women became Sarah. After his mother became hysterical, the man let her keep her name. They were put into a hotel at first. He remembers seeing all the groceries stores with the food on display. There were hotdog stands. They got their first apartment through the HIAS [Annotator’s Note: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society]. They rented a room in an apartment with another family. Walter was the little boy who already lived there. Walter would drink right out of the milk bottle. Amram was sent to school. He had to go to kindergarten and he had to learn to speak English. Amram is blind in his right eye. His mother thought it was a lazy eye. He had to wear an eye patch on his left eye to help his right eye. He learned to speak English quickly. Once he had the patch on, his eye he stopped functioning. He went to another eye doctor who confirmed he was blind in his right eye.

Fred Amram paid a lot of attention to the war in Europe. His father listened to the news on the radio. As the war ended, there were pictures of people in concentration camps. He would stop at the newsstands and look at the pictures of the people and he felt guilty that he was not there. He kept looking for school-aged children in the pictures. This was in 1945 when the pictures came out. They would talk to the people who came after them about their experiences. They had left just in time. When Amram was in sixth grade he was a good student, the best in the whole school. Another foreign child from Pasletine joined the class. The child could speak Hebrew, German, and Arabic. The teacher and the principal said Amram had to help the new student. Amram was being bullied for being Jewish, and he was the enemy because he was a German. They could speak German in secret when they had something to say that they did not want others to know. One day some kid called the new student a “dirty Jew.” The new student needed Amram to translate it into German. Amram did. The new student was athletic. In a flash, he beat up the kid who called him a dirty Jew. This was the last time Amram was bullied in school. It was interesting how the Jews were treated in the United States.

Fred Amram remembers his mother was active in searching out family both through Jewish agencies and the Red Cross. She eventually found out a great deal of information. She was able to find out who died and where they were killed. She found one relative who went to South Africa. She mainly found bad news. She tried to make contact. His father was able to let go. Every day for him was a new day. His mother was bitter until the end. Amram’s children got to know his parents. His father died at 67 years old. His mother died at 92 years old. His children heard some of his mother’s bitterness. Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2] survivors could still become bigots. They met the Sommers [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] who had also survived the Holocaust. Amram loved their oldest daughter. The girl was four or five years older than him. His mother’s cousin, Norman, was in the Kindertransport [Annotator’s Note: an organized rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War]. Norman lived in England and then eventually moved to New York. There were some others who came from Hanover [Annotator’s Note: Hanover, Germany] that his parents knew while they lived there. These friends would come over for dinner and they spoiled Amram because he was the only child between all of them. There is a New York newspaper for German Jews. People met each other through this newspaper.

Fred Amram started to identify as a Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2] survivor after he retired. He became a Holocaust survivor after he built a successful career as a professor. After he retired, there was a man looking for a Holocaust survivor who found him. He needed a speaker to tell stories. Amram told stories. Eventually, he was introduced to Ellen Kennedy who is the executive director of World Without Genocide [Annotator’s Note: Wan organization that works to protect innocent people around the world by preventing genocide and combating racism and prejudice]. Amram spoke to students. He charged fees to give the speeches. Kennedy asked Amram to be on the board because she needed a survivor. Steve Compost [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling]] made him a Holocaust survivor after he retired. It is important for us to know that people do bad things. People need to learn the warning signs. In 1933, there were many inconveniences. By 1937, he could only use one park bench. In 1938, Kristallnacht [Annotator’s Note: the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938] happened. People did not protest against what was happening. People could have all said they were Jewish and sat on one bench. They got away with marking all the stores with the letter J which led to them being able to make other restrictions. It begins and the more they can get away with, the more they take. This is why we need to teach modern history and all the way back to the crusades.