NASH:

Today is June 11, 1974. Today I will be speaking with Mrs. Ursula Michelas Israelski Zeigler who came to the United States for the first time in 1960. She was born in the year 1926 in Berlin. Today Mrs. Zeigler works as a secretary in the Training Division of New York City's Youth Services Agency. And now Mrs. Zeigler is going to tell us the story of her life.

ZEIGLER:

Hello. All right. My name is Ursula and I was born in Germany. We lived--I can't remember, not too well, my real infant years. I can remember that when I became--when I started to go to school I must have been about five years old. Then we used to live in Cainsdorf. We had our beautiful home there with plenty of land, surrounded by plenty of land, lots of fruit, fruit trees, and vegetables. To go to school, the school was around a mile distance from the house so I had to go, we all had to go, I mean, I am the fourth of six children. Well, my mother packed our bags. I remember we used to carry those shoulder bags somehow on our backs, you see, and here we go off to school. I remember on the way to school, I remember those huge dogs always coming towards us and barking, and it was such an impression because apparently since very young I had problems with aggressive and loud noises. I was always very, very afraid of, I suppose of many things because at this particular time already we were persecuted by the Nazis. My father was, he was detained in a concentration camp although my mother never told us what was happening, but I think I always had the feeling that I was guilty of something, somebody was going to get me. Also just stepping into the school, we were not allowed because us being Jews, we were not allowed to sit in the front rows. We had to sit in the back rows. We were obligated to, you know, to raise our arm and we had top say, "Heil Hitler." We also had to sing the German Anthem and we had to pray which, in my religion, you know, it is just out of the question. But as children do, you know, just do like little monkeys, you go around and do those things. I think this was all part of forming my character. I can remember very well one night, it was winter, it was very cold, we had no electricity. It was in the countryside. We had real big oven like, you know, and furnished with coal which would warm the house, and that particular night those uniformed soldiers came in and they told us to leave, to stand outside while they would search the house. I remember I was bare footed in the cold, screaming and crying, but we couldn't go in. I remember my mother was very angry but it didn't help. So those, how would you say, those problems in such young stage apparently did affect for the later years that then came. Well, finally they let my father out after Christmas, I remember this one Christmas, this is all 1935. They let him out and he came home. He came home, he was black and blue, he was very skinny, he was very nervous. We didn't recognize him at all. He was a different person right then and there. And my parents then decided to leave and here then started all the changes like moving to Berlin again where our grandparents lived. I can't remember going through immigration or going through papers or anything like this because I was much too small. I think I was eight years at the time. But I do remember that the excitement of we are leaving, we are going on a ship first time, you see, was so great and some kind of happiness did come because, you know, as a child just gets all excited and doesn't know why. I just doesn't need much to be happy and forget all these black and terrible things that were there yet she couldn't identify, she just couldn't,you know, deal with. Now we have to go to Hamburg, we were in Berlin, now we have to go to Hamburg, we went on the ship, it was a freighter, half passenger, half cargo. And we sailed, I cannot remember not even saying good-bye to anybody. I just can remember being on the ship and having a terrific time. I can remember the storm, I can remember getting very ill and then I can remember we came to Puerto Rico. I can remember us--there was this pool on the ship and we were just swimming all day and the people unloading the ship and those terrific nets full of merchandise going back and forth, but we just were in this warm, beautiful climate and enjoying ourselves. We go into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, which is West Indies, which is the center of the Mexican Gulf.

NASH:

How did you family decide to go to Santo Domingo?

ZEIGLER:

The reason well, we decided to go there, first of all my father's sister lived there. Second of all, no other country, no other port, would let a Jew in at that particular time. There was no more quota open for no Jewish people, you see. So, another thing I can remember very well, we had a negro passenger. He came on the ship on one of our stops. I think it was France, some place. He was a Haitian diplomat. I can remember as children looking at him and being told it was bad, don't look at the man. But we wanted to touch him because we thought we could take off the blackness of his skin, you see. And we became very good friends and believe it or not, it was a great impression, yet at this particular time we didn't know that for many years to come this was going to be the people and the type of color and the type of culture and, you know, that we were going to be exposed to. Yet the first impression was really not disagreeable. Well, here we come. We came to Santo Domingo, ten in family. My father, my mother, his father, the sister of my grandfather, and us six children. We came 1936 in September, sometime in September. It was warm, I just remembered it was terribly warm and humid and different and we all were loaded from the port into a--it was like an open truck--with all our belongings down to a small town. Well, the small town didn't have a hotel so someone told us that we could sleep in some kind of a veranda-like, I don't know, an open thing, you know, a stable, like a stable. They don;t have stables there because in South America you don't need stables. The animals do not need to be kept inside, but it was like a stable. And they furnished some swings for us to sleep in which were hammocks and I remember that particular night I fell three times off my hammock because I was so excited for next day that my aunt was going to come and meet us and then take us all the way up wherever we were supposed to live. Well, next day then my aunt came and big commotion and I can't really remember if I was happy or I was unhappy. It was so much, so different, you know, and, of course, we are looking for snakes and monkeys and all that, you know. They don't have those things. I mean really they have none of that. You know, like they used to say, you know, those big coconut trees and you see the people climbing on top of them. None of that happened, you know. We just looking for those things to happen and it didn't happen, you see. So, my aunt lived sixty miles from that little town all the way into the woods. There was no road, you had to go by horseback. Well, we got together I guess maybe twenty mules and all that, you know, put all the stuff on them and ride. Now we never rode a mule, you know. How do we do it. Two children on one. It was such excitement, you know. It took us a whole day to get up there and then when we finally came to my aunt's house I can remember it was a two flight house and very modern and very comfortable and her children were there. She has five children. She has four boys and one girl. And it was beautiful, you know. Well, we lived there for quite a while until we could buy our own land with a house which we then later on revised and rebuilt and made it livable.

NASH:

Were you able to take money out of Germany?

ZEIGLER:

Well, of course not. all we got out of Germany was one hundred dollars per head. That's all they gave us. Plus we could spend little monies that my father had to buy the most necessary things and that's the way we lived. Here we are, my cousins speak no German, we spoke no Spanish, we didn't understand each other.

NASH:

How long have they been in--

ZEIGLER:

That were there many years because they were born one in France, one in England, one in Germany, and two in Santo Domingo. And, of course, at the time we arrived there my aunt was married to a Dominican man so no German was spoken. There was very little communication but yet children really don't need a language to communicate, you know. Everything was new, everything was exciting and everything was-- well, there was a trauma years but really not so big when you're eight years old. It never hurt as much as if it would happen today, you know, at this time. Well, here we were, not a school, not a language, not being able to eat the food, not being used to the heat, not being used to anything, and it took a year or so before we could start learning little by little. First of all the food, the language, our family and everything. My father used to teach us so we wouldn't lose what we had learned in Germany because already, I was already going into the second grade in Germany then, and he also taught us about nature. His teaching was different. His teaching actually was you learned what you saw. It was not theory. It was all practical. And I must say we learned pretty well because still until this day, you know, many common sense, much common sense, you know, I have today because of this type of education that I received. Well, then he died. He died two years later. He died of typhus. Prior to his death he had an operation where they--he had some problems with his kidneys. and when he came back he was bad and he just went down like a candle, you see, he died. Well, he left my mother six children, no money. The land belonged to the government, if you couldn't cultivate it, you know, they took it away from you. The house he built there was also taken away because it was not on your land, you see, and all she could do, and she is not being a country woman because, believe it or not my mother is an opera singer. Yes, what a contrast. She took us and again got the mules, loaded them, and we went down to the little town where we first came from. She wanted to find out if she could get a job to feed her children. My oldest sister, she stayed with my aunt and the rest, five of us, we went with her. Well, how many years now, three , four years. We started going to school. I think she took a job and we lived. I mean if you call this living. There was a little--two little rooms, there were no beds, there was no food. There was a community center where you used to cook. I was only ten years old. I had to cook in the community center in order to get my food and my sister's food, or we had to beg. We had no medical care, we had nothing. We did speak the language, badly as it was, but we had nothing. These were the hard years, very hard years. Then came the change. My mother had written to the president of the island, which is Mr. Trujillo. at that time is was Rafael Trujillo, and he invited us to come to his finka, his great big land, and he helped my mother by subsidizing her with money and ways for education and everything.

NASH:

Why was this? How many immigrants were there on the island?

ZEIGLER:

At this particular time I think we were very few, maybe five, at this particular time because shortly after came the immigration. They came in immigration, Jews immigration that the president gave them a great piece of land to cultivate and to (?), which is called Sosua. The north side of the island. But going back to our situation, at that particular time there were not immigrants. There were not people from any other country. Maybe some Arabs, Dominicans and Haitians, many Haitians.

NASH:

Do you remember Trujillo?

ZEIGLER:

Yes, I was a good friend of Trujillo. I can tell you much about Trujillo because in later years when I married, my husband was his private physician. And, of course, we were in a very close relationship. Plus my sister had married his brother-in-law. So, we were pretty close at that particular time. Well, things just became better and better, you see. I finalized my education and so did my sisters. I loved the island. I loved the nature of the island as much as I can love any other place in the whole world. I think this is the place I--I think this is home. Right now I would never consider anything but home like as Santo Domingo. well, very young I married a doctor. He was not a doctor then, but he was a student. He became a doctor and I had a daughter. again changes because although I was not educated in a German fashion, but I still was not a Dominican. And a lot of men, I don;t like to down them because there are many, many good men and maybe he was not a bad man, but maybe I didn't have the maturity of understanding the situation and, therefore, our marriage was not really successful. Now many years went by, you see. Always traveling, always moving because him being a doctor he was always called to different places in the island and away from the island, you know. also he used to go to different countries to take different courses and studies, you see, and I used to go with him.

NASH:

Where were some of the places that you went to?

ZEIGLER:

We went to Puerto Rico, we went to Cuba, we went to Venezuela. I can't remember one more place, but we went to another place also. There were many conventions also that we attended, you see.

NASH:

At this time did you feel--how Spanish did you feel or how Dominican did you feel, and how German did you feel?

ZEIGLER:

Well, I felt, let's say seventy-five percent Dominica. In fact, I did not know how much German I was until I was exposed to this country. Because then going back to the island I am an outsider, I am a definite outsider, you see. Yet my heart is with them and I can't help that. Well, visiting other countries I learned many cultures, I learned many behaviors, and although going back I always felt that I never knew enough. That there was a lack in my life. There was a great loophole. I really was growing unhappy because I did not have the happiness in my home. I did not have the happiness, not even with my family. I felt I have to go beyond the horizon. I saw the horizon and I always wanted to know what is behind it. I thought different countries, different people, maybe better people. What and why all the time. My marriage broke, I was twenty-eight years old the, very young, and I left. Alright, I really wanted to say is that I had many reasons why I left Santo Domingo. I had one reason, family reasons, I had, second of all, I had political reasons. In my awareness, when I went through the awareness in other countries to find out different political systems plus Germany, I thought what Mr. Trujillo was doing was actually terrible. I could not any longer be part of the good life. You see, I went through so much bad life I could identify so well with poor people and when the better life came and what you call everything, the best, I suddenly didn't enjoy it any longer. I saw the blood, I say the blood of every person that he killed. I saw enormous amounts of families that he destroyed for his ego because, of course, they did not want to see--they did not want to do what they were told. I saw the castration, the mind castration going on. I saw no education, I saw no choice, and so I left. There was a German ship at the harbor and I was on it that night. I had one suitcase and it was via Venezuela, and via Venezuela it went. Here I came. Very seasick because there was this tropical storm going on, but I left. I did not know anybody in Venezuela and arrive in Aquada. Aquada I think is the name of the beaches. I oriented myself to Caracas, which is thirty miles up in the mountains. When I was in that car, suddenly I felt very, very free. I can't explain to you how I felt after all these years of oppression. It really was an oppression. Well, single, young, free, what do you think?

NASH:

Were you still married?

ZEIGLER:

No, I was divorced, I was free, I only had a child, and that child I had left in Santo Domingo in a Catholic college, live-in college. She was getting her education there and all I had on my mind was get a job, learn about this big country, and full of adventure, you see. Well, I got a room and went out on the street.

NASH:

Did you have any money?

ZEIGLER:

Well, I think I had three hundred dollars which I think the Bolivar was three and half Bolivars for one dollar, so I didn't have much money. But this didn't bother me at all because I just felt very, very good. The first week I walk around, I liked to just burst out, you see. It was so good, it was so light, everything. You just wouldn't believe it. All I wanted to do was walk. I wanted to walk where nobody knew me, I didn't know anybody. It was just like a bit crazy, it was really crazy. Well, I'm very communicative I think. I just talk to anybody, you know, and I start making friends just like that. I bought the papers and I looked for jobs. I was a nurse at the time. I could have gone to work for a hospital, but yet I did not want to deal with no sick people. I wanted to heal my own sickness. I wanted to heal many things that I felt was very, very sick in me. And here and there I found a spa. It belonged to a Russian family, immigrants too. And it was a male-female type of spa. I got the job and I became the assistant, an attendant there. Easy, that was what, one week later, and I started to work. I started to meet people. Imagine, all the people visiting the spa and as I had no language problems because I spoke Spanish and they speak Spanish too, And everybody was happy and I was happy there. The owners of the place, they took me in and now it's time to get an apartment, now it is time to start growing there. All I did then was take long trips, study the environment, study their culture, and very exciting. You know, you see those Indians, you see--I mean they really live like in the eighteenth century. Maybe, you know. I mean it is unbelievable the way they live. I thought Dominicans were behind culture, whatever, but there It is unbelievable what I saw there. Yet everybody was kind of smiling, happy, you know. You didn't see the unhappiness. But one thing I didn't know is that Venezuela at that time was also on the verge of a revolution. At this particular time their president was Mr. Jimenez, Perez Jimenez. Mr. Perez Jimenez was not liked. He was a dictator as much as Trujillo was a dictator. And I think it was two months after my arrival I understood that many people wanted to throw him off so, therefore, I could see and I could sense and I could feel how--the whole city of Caracas was doing something, you see, getting together, was uniting, and the way they did it was they paralyzed the whole city for two whole days.

NASH:

What year were you there?

ZEIGLER:

The great lesson, I learned that millions of people can unite and can do things. I learned that poor people are not that poor as they stick together and utilize their power. I learned all the possibilities that exist to us, and I'm talking about the working people. And I learned that here was a great need of a leader, of leadership. And I also learned that I liked--I had a great deal of ego--and I that I liked being a leader and I liked to learn and I liked to tell people where to go and how to do because I became involved. And although I didn't know anybody yet, I knew exactly who to talk and what to say and when to say it. Well, going back to their problem, the country's problem. Two days later, I mean, you know, can you imagine seeing a very, very busy street, let's say Fifth Avenue paralyzed. Nobody on the street. The whole city, and it's a big city, was like that. We all made sure we had enough food for one week in the house so we didn't have to go out. Perhaps an ambulance or perhaps something like this or the fire truck came by, but nothing else. I happened to live at the corner where Mr. President, the president lived and, as I said, two days later, it was maybe eleven o;clock, he had, the army had those big machine tanks on each corner, you see. And I think somebody did something that made something explode because we were staying outside the house and suddenly the, (?), you know, of shells, they wiped out the whole street. And we all ducked, you know, and went underneath the cars because we were outside, you know, outside of the house, and glass broken and those bullets, they all, you know, went into the house and around the house. It did wound few people because I used to live at a hotel, you see, and then maybe two hours later I saw the caravan of his cars pass and where he was in and they took him to the airport. And that was exciting.

NASH:

And he left the country?

ZEIGLER:

And he left the country, yes. He was not put in jail, he left the country,yes. But he was obliged to leave it. Well if I tell you there was more because, you wouldn't believe this. I had a sister in Colombia, Bogota, Colombia. She wrote to me and she said, "I would like you to come and visit me because I know you're trying to find a place where to live. I think you would like to live here. I would like you to find out about our country." Well, now that Venezuela has no president, everything is chaos you know, it was a chaos. You know, there were no rules, no regulations, nothing because they have no president. I mean everybody's wild, everybody wants to be president and everybody's fighting everybody, you know. I thought, well, it's time for me to leave here, you know, because I'm a stranger anyway. But I jumped in a car. It was going to the Colombian frontier. You see Colombia and Venezuela, they make a frontier, to a place called Cucuta. It took us three days to come to Cucuta. Here I am again. I left my house, I left everything. I took one suitcase and I went to Colombia. Okay, I went to Cucuta, there was no frontier lines, no offices, anything, no passports, you just passed by, you know, you just went in like this, you know, although I had my papers in order, you know, but--

NASH:

Was that in the Amazons?

ZEIGLER:

That is in the Amazons, yes. This is beautiful country you know. I remember going up in the Andes, very, very high. Now here you are, you are tropical. This is a tropical country yet it is so high that you really live in clouds, you see. And like if it was five o'clock in the morning, we perhaps saw this, very far away, saw this little house. We stopped the car, eight people in the car, you know. I don't know who they were. I suppose they were fugitives also because at that particular time all the people that were with the president, they all had to leave because they were killing them, you see. So, we used to go, lock the door, get the people up, make coffee, drink coffee, drink coffee and then go on again. Nobody knew, nobody cared. It was like devastation. Well, that was experience that was good because after you--you know, like living so pressed. I mean, I don't know, is it wild, is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter because you just go, you know, you're transient to whatever you do because I didn't have my heart in no place. I just wanted to live, see, and experiment. And I did experiment quite a bit. So I got to Colombia and found my sister's environment very strict. She was married to a very rich man. She has five children and she is really zero on the left side. She is the shadow of a man that knows and thinks bigger than he can afford it. Here comes Ursula and to that type of environment. Now do I need this? I don't need this. I didn't need it, I didn't like it. And I stood three months. I became very frustrated. I didn't like Colombia. I wouldn't say Colombia, but Bogota I disliked because of their climate, because of the way people dressed, they way people thought, the way people expressed themselves, the way, you know, oh hypocrisy of a culture that was beautiful yet they suppressed it. Very (?) but very, very false. It was very, very hard. And three months later I had to leave and, of course, I left where I came from. I went back to Venezuela. I went back to Caracas. There I met this man and then we got married six months later, but here we go again. He somehow had told me that his previous marriage was already--he was divorced and all his papers were in order yet it was not so. So therefore I know it was bigamy. The man was nice and I think I liked him enough to start my new life with a problem, you see. And not to harm him perhaps it was not his fault, which was not a question here because it was as much my fault as his fault because I did not investigate any further, you see. I just annulled the marriage and I left, and that was 1959, and came to New York to live with my mother. I arrived here, I forget, March 21st I arrived in New York. It was quite cold, very cold. We came in a two propeller plane. It took us I think thirteen hours to fly to New York. We made it and, of course, you come down to Kennedy Airport and what do you think it does to you? This is big--I spoke no English. Now again, I spoke no English and this is out of hand, this is out of my real comprehension of where I am going, who am I, what am I going to do there? Do I really want to go there, you know, or that I have to go there, you know, or what was it? Well, my mother was there. She waited for me and we had a nice, warm welcome. We took a taxi and came to her apartment where for the first time I met my stepfather, a very lovely Irish man. Of course, I could not communicate, I spoke no English, he spoke no Spanish. Neither spoke he German. But he was a very, very nice person. And this was my start here in New York. It was very cold. It was very uncertain. I had no money but I didn't care. I really didn't care. I still didn't care at that particular time. I didn't care about future, I didn't care about anything. All I wanted to do was to see and to, you know, it was like shock. Shocking myself to find myself because I still didn't know where I was or what I wanted, you see. But New York has something very, very funny that no other country has. The realities in New York are not the Spanish realities. The realities are when you get here, if you don't swim you are going to drown. And I had to swim because my mother is not the type of person that would swim for me, nor did my stepfather, you see. First of all, she felt I should learn New York. She took me by the hand, she took me around, she showed me basic steps like to go to the supermarket. How do you shop here? How do you buy here, how do you cook here, what do you cook here, because it is all so different, you see. I had to learn about her habits and then she had to learn, I suppose, about my habits. And it wasn't too hard because after all, I loved my mother very much and I was very, very--I thought, in fact, I thought when I be with my mother, you see, all my problems be over because somehow in my fantasy I still was tied, my umbilical cord was still to her navel. It was something very, very bad in my fantasy, you see. I did not want to see responsibilities, I did not want to understand that you have your problem, you've got to deal with it. If I had a problem I didn't want to deal with it. I just throw it out and jump into the next problem and run from it. And all I was doing was running. My gosh, I'm already, what is it, thirty-two years old, right? I went to school. I took the Swedish massage. I graduated. At the same time that I graduated I learned the language. And I have my profession. I became a licensed masseur which, after I graduated, I found out that in New York this type of work cannot be--it's highly discredited because you are,well, your whores use it, you know, as an excuse to--therefore, one of my class companions, he was going out to Lakewood, New Jersey, to work on the week-ends. I remember his name was Hasal Greenberg. He asked me if I wanted to go to Lakewood, New Jersey, to see if I liked it there to work at the Seaton and Spa Hotel. And I agreed and, of course, you know, moving, moving. Here we go again. And I went to Lakewood, New Jersey. I met Mrs. Levin, Mr. Levin, very nice people and I liked the place, and I took a job there. But now going, before this, before taking the masseur, you know, the work as a masseur, I did at the beginning when I first came to New York, I met this lady Indira Davie. Indira Davie was a (?). A lady that had taught all over the world, had written. She even was a prize winner with her book Yoga for Americans . I made an appointment to see her because I thought I needed more advice than just reading the book. And, funny enough, she took to me and she asked me if I wanted to live with her. Now remember I'm living with my mother and she was just a transient here in New York, and I said, "Well, as long you are going to stay in New York, I would like very much to live with you." She stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and there we went, both of us. She was giving lectures and having her classes here in New York and I was her companion and her helper. I must say I took to Yoga like if I would have been born to it. To me it was a revelation of satisfaction. I suddenly felt--it gave me something that nothing else had given me. Whether it was the environment, whether it was the mystics that I was not exposed before, I only know is I wanted it and I wanted it bad and I learned it. I became a very good pupil, so good that after she left three months later, I took over her class. I took over every pupil she had. I took over most of the business she had started, you see, and I was quite successful. She left it to me and Dr. Doolittle. Dr. Doolittle is an official therapist, a very nice person, I thought at the time. But apparently I did too much and I became very nervous and I became quite ill. I think I had a nervous breakdown because it was too much. That reality with the other reality, which was my needs and my personal shortcomings and my personal fears because for one thing I had to think of the future and I had to think of my daughter and I just felt guilty and I just felt so guilty that it made me sick.

NASH:

Where was your daughter?

ZEIGLER:

My daughter was still in Santo Domingo at the time, so I had a breakdown. I was sitting and suddenly I felt like I was running and I still was sitting and I started to cry and I became very, very bad, very, very nervous. The doctor was called and he said I have to go home. I have to relax. I went back to Santo Domingo. I stood for three months and when I came back to New York dr. Doolittle had taken over my business and had it worked to the ground. There was no business. But what he didn't take was what I had learned and right then I understood that that was the only thing that mattered in this whole life, the education that we get. And I took it as a goal and then I could realize what I had to do. That I had to bring my daughter and I had to give her the education. She should be with me and she should experiment with me together, but at the same time she should have the education, and I brought her to New York. Believe it or not, when she came there was very bad weather and the plane couldn't even land so they took her to Boston. I spent the whole night at the airport thinking that I had lost a daughter because we had no communication what happened to that plane until very early in the morning. But, what was she sixteen, fifteen years old. She was traveling alone, no English, but I suppose the people, you know, the airline people, were very nice because she had no problems going to the hotel and then transferring to a bus and then coming to New York. She arrived in one piece and I felt good. I felt I did right. I felt this is what I needed and this is what I wanted to do. We all lived together, my mother, my stepfather, my daughter and myself. Now one problem, my daughter was raised like a rich girl and here we were poor and she did not want to adapt. So, imagine the problems that arised for her to be able to understand, being so young and being brought up in a Catholic strict religion, and now me having changed into a free person. She couldn't understand me and now I couldn't understand her because I had forgotten already what it meant to be in jail. so we had a lot of problems. Well, going back to Seaton and Spa now, I meet this man there. He worked there at Seaton and Spa. Now he is Mr. Zeigler, and he somehow, you know, he himself was really looking to form a home. He just lost his wife. she died in an automobile accident and I was alone and he was alone and we started to go out. Well, I took my daughter down to the hotel. They gave us two rooms for us to live, but, of course, my daughter did not see in Mr. Zeigler but a servant and she refused to deal with him as a person, you see. Well, there is a problem. I wanted the man and yet she hated him and we did get married and lost a daughter. I had lost a daughter for many years although I stood by and I gave her education, but let's say, it was not moral punishment, it was a punishment, it was a shadow always in between my daughter, my husband, myself, you know, Well, she went through a lot of experiences, good and bad experiences. At the time she had to learn English and she had to learn a little profession so she took up hairdressing. She moved from Lakewood. She moved to next town. Can't remember the name now, and she lived in a boarding house. She was sixteen years old then. Very, very difficult age. And apparently, you know, she was in a store and picked some clothes up and she was picked up. I'm not saying that she never studied. Although I paid school and worked very, very hard massaging day and night, but she wanted to punish me so bad that she punished herself into being punished. And I was called in and I had to get her a custodian because she was a minor. You see, they did not put her in jail, but they wanted someone that would make her responsible so my mother volunteered. And my mother brought her to New York, and while I lived in Pennsylvania. Well, they lived a year or so. Now the girl knows her English and she knows, she has already graduated from the beauty culture, she is working and she is running around. My mother could not hold her back. And she's really punishing herself. She is really, really doing all sorts of things that, you know, like when I--I didn't know about it but I felt it. Things were very bad, you see, and now I cannot be happy where I am and I cannot leave my husband and I cannot pick my daughter up, see. It's a very, very cruel situation. And I made a decision, I came to New York. I came to New York, my husband refused to come, but he saw that if he wouldn't give in I just wouldn't go back. I just couldn't go back, you see. So he does love me well, he loves me well. And he came to New York and like everybody else then we start fresh. We had to get a job and we did and we worked and I separated her from my mother and I got her a room, my daughter, and we went to N.Y.U. We are very fortunate. She found this dean. I can't remember his name, Dolph, something about Dolph. Okay, we found this dean and he found out that she was very intelligent and it was a pity, you see, that she was wasting herself. And I was called in and I had quite a conversation with Doorman, Mr. Doorman, and Mr. Doorman did help me a lot to understand my daughter and to understand the whole situation and, you know, to give me insights and, you know, and what could be done. And we followed him and she started to--I never knew she wanted to become a, what is she a psycho-analyst?

NASH:

A Psychologist?

ZEIGLER:

Psychologist. I had never known this is what she wanted. Perhaps because she herself had passed now for so many obstacles and so many things, you see. She asked me if it was possible, and I said, "Well, if we work together maybe it is possible. I don't know but we can try." This has been my thing in life, I try. I don't know if it's going to come out, but I am going to try it. And she successfully graduated and became--started to work well with those people and became a-- and you know, right now she is a very capable person. We both understood, we both understood our obligations and our short-comings and I must say, there is nobody happier than us. So it still goes, like the saying goes, You can't give up, you just can't give up." And I'm a firm believer, you know, that family, to me, family is everything and no matter how bad things look there is always somebody worse than you are and you just have to try harder. I think I said it all.

NASH:

Thank you very much.

ZEIGLER:

All these different levels that I go through and I--