Krissi Wester
ENG 102-104
Mr. Neuberger
10 October 2011

Edith Coliver was born in Karls Ruhe which interpreted means Charles’ rest. Hers was seemingly a normal middle class childhood of a German Jew. Her father was a conservative and her mother an orthodox Jew. She was one of three children born to her parents. Her father was a banker who had been injured in World War I and her mother a Nurse in the war. They lived a comfortable life where the Jewish community was very confined and tight knit.
Edith said she never considered herself much of a German after age ten. She was kicked out of her school because she was Jewish. An Uncle that was in America wanted Edith to join him and go to school in America, but she refused to go and was sent to England to attend school at age 11. After only one year of school there, her father announced that they were going to America. Her father was able to secure passports via his connections at the American Consulate and they left for America in 1938. Edith stated about the cultural climate in Germany at the time: “It was very un-American. It was guilty until proven innocent.” Although she herself never witnessed the atrocities that were going on, she heard stories of the extermination camps, and heard some of the tasteless jokes that were told during that ttime about the SS. The family’s departure from Germany was a new beginning for them in America.
Edith attended Berkley and was Phi Beta Kappa, although according to her, it never assisted her much and she threw her key into the Hudson river. She later went on to be an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals. Her father told her when he found out that she was going to Nuremberg, “You belong to the generation that was disenfranchised by Hitler, but as you go to do justice, be just, and don’t forget that you are a Jew.” During the trials, she said she believed the Germans who stated they were powerless to the Nazi’s, but not those who said they didn’t know. When asked about speaking publicly about the Holocaust she stated “I was going on the courage of my convictions.” Edith has lived a long and prosperous life since leaving Germany and says that to her knowledge she only lost one family member to the Holocaust, but she did lose many friends from her early school years, particularly her best friend Gertrude Marx, and still today when she encounters other survivors from school, it is awkward at best.