Ilse Lehmeier and Karin Pardo interview and transcript, September 5, 1993

Ilse Cassel Lehmeier was born in Berlin in the early 1930s. She and her two sisters were sent by their parents to live with relatives in Sweden in early 1939. The parents then went to Shanghai, and in late 1940, the children travelled across the Soviet Union to join them. Lehmeier attended the Kadoorie School in Hongkew. She now lives in New York.

Karin Zacharias Pardo was born in Königsberg in 1931. Shortly before leaving for Shanghai, her family moved to Berlin and she attended a boarding school in Hannover. The family left in 1939 on the “Victoria” from Genoa. Along with two other families they met on the boat, they started the “Wayside Diele” restaurant on Wayside Road. Pardo attended the Kadoorie School and was a member of the Girl Guides. Her father, a lawyer, also started the cigar store “Zigarrengeschäft Zacharias,” created a lending library from his own collection, “Das Gute Buch,” and worked with the Schiedsgericht of the Jewish Community. The family came to the United States in 1947. Karin Pardo is a chemist who lives in Chicago