Your Neighbor: Eva Schaal

Neighborhood: Pelican Cove
Neighbor since: 1996

Eva Schaal remembers the night Adolf Hitler came to power.

She was 11 years old, and was performing on stage when she heard an announcement over the city’s loudspeakers: Hitler had been appointed chancellor of Germany.

That night, Schaal saw swastikas all over the streets of Berlin. She vividly remembers seeing soldiers marching in celebration.

Schaal’s mother was upset and said they had to get out of Germany immediately, but her father was sure they would be fine because he had fought for Germany in World War I. So, they stayed in Germany for a while.

As life became more difficult for Jews, Schaal was left out of school activities, switched to a private Jewish school and had to end friendships with non-Jewish children.

Becoming desperate, her parents went to the American consulate in Berlin in hopes of locating family in the U.S. They went through dozens of phone books, looking for people who had their same last name and writing them letters in the hope that someone would give them an affidavit to get out of Berlin.

Schaal was lucky to secure a spot aboard the Kindertransport, a rescue mission to get Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig, and into foster homes, hostels and farms in the United Kingdom.

Schaal and her husband, Frank Schaal, have told the stories of their experiences during the Holocaust and their survival all over the country. They tell their full stories in “The Holocaust: Personal Accounts, a Collection of 20 Accounts of Individual Experiences in the Holocaust.”

IN HER OWN WORDS:
“It’s wonderful. We have entertainment and we have exercises and all the people who live here love the beautiful plants and flowers.”