Elisabeth Gloos of Plainsboro shared vivid memories of her teen years on her recent 90th birthday. Though she now lives in the peace and security of Merwick Care & Rehabilitation Center in Plainsboro, she has reminded herself for many years that the only reason she lived beyond the age of 16 was because a Nazi officer told her how to escape.
Gloos, then 15, was at boarding school on the night of Kristallnacht. Three young men in SS uniforms gave the 30 students two hours notice to pack up and leave. Her father met her at the train station in Berlin but told her that her stepmother would not allow her to stay with them.
She began living with the elderly mother of her father’s friend as a maid. “I was staying with a total stranger, but she was kind to me,” she says.
She had to grow up quickly. She watched the bombing in Berlin and was advised to go to the shelter. She and her boyfriend were turned away because they were Jewish.
Shortly after the bombings, her father abandoned her yet again when he secured a single ticket to China — for himself — from a Jewish organization. “He went to China and left me,” she says. “I was without money, except 10 marks, worth roughly $100 now. That was where my childhood ended.”
Soon after, the Gestapo sent her a letter saying, “You have 10 days to leave the country or we will pick you up.” She went to 50 different consulates seeking asylum over the next six days. “Nobody had room for me,” she says. “I had four days left. I went to the Gestapo and turned myself in.”
The Gestapo official, who had a daughter her age, gave her specific instructions on who to visit and what to say. After the Jewish agency told her how much she endangered everyone, a man returned from a back room with a train ticket to Italy, a ship ticket to Shanghai, and 20 marks for expenses.
She traveled to Shanghai on a ship called Conte Verdi and was reunited with her father. “My father had opened a store, and a lot of refugees sold their beautiful clothing there,” she says. “He was very wealthy and elegant.”
She was 17 when she met Maum Gloos, the man who would become her husband. While in China, their son, Conrad, was born. Eventually, they moved to New York, where they lived for many years. Her son is a freelance photographer in Plainsboro.
“On a recent trip to New Jersey to visit my son, I got sick and he took me to the hospital,” she says. When the hospital told her that she could not return home, she entered Merwick — first to utilize its rehabilitation services and later to treat it as her home.
She has shared her recollections with her roommate and friend, Consuelo Bolivar. “We get along well,” they both said.
