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GARY EICHTEN: And good morning. Welcome to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. Well, today is budget day in Minnesota. The governor officially releases his 2007 State Budget Proposal later this hour. And over the noon hour, we're going to focus on what the governor is proposing in terms of taxes and spending, education, health care, and the like. And we'll be talking with some key legislators about the governor's budget plan as well. That's all coming up over the noon hour.

Meanwhile, this hour of Midday, we have two more interviews from our continuing Voices of Minnesota Interview Series. Today's focus, human rights. First up this hour, we're going to hear from Aviva Breen, who lobbies governments to protect human rights. Aviva Breen is a Minneapolis attorney who chairs the Board of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.

Later, we'll hear from Robert Treuer, who grew up in a Jewish family in Austria and survived the human rights abuses of World War II. Mr. Treuer is a Northern Minnesota tree farmer who lives near Bemidji. Here with this hour's Voices of Minnesota Series is Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: Aviva Breen is a human rights campaigner. Breen chairs the Board of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. She retired some years ago from her job as Head of Minnesota's Legislative Commission on the Economic Status of Women. The commission helped legislators craft laws protecting the rights of Minnesota women. Breen lobbied for pay equity and child care subsidies. The commission also helped craft laws to protect women who were victims of domestic violence.

Aviva Breen was born and raised in Chicago. She moved to Minnesota after graduating from college. After working as an elementary school teacher, and then as a mother at home, raising four children, Breen entered law school at age 38. Breen says her work as an attorney for the legal services advocacy project in Saint Paul, representing poor women, helped shape her views.

These days, as part of her work for Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Breen travels the world, encouraging officials in other countries to use Minnesota's Civil Protection Law for Women as a model to help prevent domestic abuse. We talked in a conference room at the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights offices in downtown Minneapolis.

AVIVA BREEN: We have been doing over a long period of time training on the issue of domestic violence, which just so you know, that resulted two years ago in the passage of a law in Bulgaria based on the Minnesota order for-- civil order for protection law, which I lobbied in 1978, and which they have their own version now, which has been in place for two years.

DAN OLSON: What is the domestic violence picture like in some of those countries?

AVIVA BREEN: It's the same everywhere. The difference is the cultures. And so cultures are very different. But the issue, I have to say, is universal. The second trip I did to Bulgaria with the women's program, we did a workshop for women from 11 Balkan countries. Now this was before the big war in Kosovo, but there were little wars going on.

We had women from Kosovo, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, 11 countries. And there were two representatives from each country. One of the reasons for this conference was that with all that was going on and all the horrible situations in which they were living, they all identified domestic violence as the major issue they wanted to work on.

DAN OLSON: So when a woman in one of these countries calls the cops and says, my husband or boyfriend or whatever is beating up on me, what happens typically?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, now it depends. I mean, in many of the countries there, it was not criminalized to assault someone within your own family. But on the other hand, if there was an assault that was really, really serious, like attempted murder or something-- they have very complicated laws. And so it depends.

They might come out. They might-- the police would come if somebody calls, but what tools they had at their disposal to do anything with or what they thought they ought to do varies. And as it was in this country years ago, it was the thought, look, this is a private matter. It belongs in the family. It's not for us to get involved.

DAN OLSON: Would the women even think in many of those countries of calling the police in the first place?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, yes or a neighbor might. I mean, yes, they would and it depended.

DAN OLSON: So when you talk to the--

AVIVA BREEN: Wait. But I should say, for example, in Nepal, when we did police training, and the first thing we said was, what do you do when somebody calls the police? And all the cops kind of looked at us, because in Nepal, you don't call the police, you go to the police station when you want to report something. So they're all looking like, what do they mean?

So you have to know what goes on in that culture, and then what you can-- in Nepal, when a person marries, they marry into that family and out of their own family. So going back to their family, for example, is not an option. They live in an extended family. They could be abused by an in-law, by a mother-in-law, by sister-in-law, the alternatives. And are the women trained for any kind of work if they were going to leave?

So the alternatives there may be very different from another country, let's say Bulgaria, where in fact, the women may be very likely to be working and at least have some kind of gainful employment if they were going to leave a marriage. But on the other hand, in Bulgaria, where housing is such a problem, even after a divorce, people sometimes have to live in the same house. You have all kinds of issues that are different from here.

DAN OLSON: Minneapolis attorney, Aviva Breen. She chairs the Board of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. Breen and others have made follow-up trips to Bulgaria over the years. Here's more of our conversation.

What is it that brought you to Bulgaria and what's been happening there?

AVIVA BREEN: The first two visits were really to do training. And the very first visit it was what we called domestic violence 101. It was just training about what does this mean, how do we define it. You've asked us to come. So let us tell you what we think it is or what the dynamics are and what are possible ways to approach remedies.

DAN OLSON: People have invited you. You don't come with an agenda. You don't come with a recipe for how you're going to tell the Bulgarians, how they should think about issues pertaining to women.

AVIVA BREEN: That's right. We come at their invitation, but we do come with our beliefs and our values and the basis on which we do our work. So we do come to say, this is what we think. And here's our proposals for what we think will work.

DAN OLSON: Do you find that a fair number of Bulgarians, do you think, share your values and view of the world?

AVIVA BREEN: They are very appreciative of the work we're doing and the fact that we're willing to devote time and to spend the money that it costs to come there and work with them. And yes, they're very, very appreciative.

DAN OLSON: But you have to make nice. You go on tours with them. I suppose they want to show you the country, they want to show you the town and so on.

AVIVA BREEN: No. We don't go on tours with them. The first time we were there, we did travel around, but we traveled in a drafty bus and that was so that we could go to different communities and talk to different groups there. But no, there's none of that. We do get taken out to dinner, to a Mexican restaurant, which was quite awful.

DAN OLSON: So this is getting right down to work.

AVIVA BREEN: They don't have any money. They can't do anything like that. They're always scrounging just to put together the money for a conference. And no, there's none of that stuff.

DAN OLSON: They were cordial to you. You ended up apparently at one point on a Bulgarian radio talk show. What was that like?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, it was a trip. What I have to say is the questions are pretty predictable or the comments. They're not any different anywhere I've ever been, regardless of the culture. So there's people who say other countries, it's worse in other places, or it's the culture, or it's because our economy is so bad and people drink a lot, or that's not the government's business. I mean, the responses are really pretty much the same no matter where you are.

DAN OLSON: In more private moments, do people come up to you and say, Ms. Breen, I want to tell you something, I want to tell you about myself, I want to tell you my story? Does anything like that happen?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, it doesn't happen randomly, but we did-- I did have exactly that experience. The second time we were there, we did-- we put on a conference. It was the Inter Balkan Conference. And there were women from 11 Balkan countries, a couple of people, a couple of delegates from each country. And the purpose was to give them a broad range of training about various responses that have been developed here and let them look at what might work in their country.

And the morning of the second day, we were previewing a video that one of my colleagues uses in police training, which she does all around the country and all around the world, really. And it was a video that had various scenarios showed the police responding to a domestic and showed the situation with opportunities to show what should-- what's a good way to respond, what isn't so good, what's helpful, what's not. And so we-- it was about, I don't know, 15-minute video.

And after it was done, we were kind of standing around talking. And there's a woman who was in charge of our arrangements, a woman in her 50s maybe. And she was with us all the time. She was kind of our minder. She was at everything we did. And she was in charge of the arrangements and the coffee and the room and everything. And she'd been watching this video unbeknownst to us, while we were watching it.

And after it was over and we were standing around for a minute, she said, this happens. And then she proceeded. And we just kind of looked and she proceeded to tell us her story. She'd been married to a diplomat. She lived in another country. He beats her. She was pregnant, and she lost the baby.

The beating continued. And the same thing happened again, she lost another baby. And then she left him and came back to Bulgaria to live with her mother. And that was the whole story that she told us. And we just sort of-- it was very profound. I mean, she was telling this to a group of strangers. It reminded us why we do what we do.

DAN OLSON: When you make these trips and when you go and look in the faces of these people, when you look in their eyes, and then-- do you sense optimism, or do you sense cynicism? These well-meaning Americans are always barging into one issue or another. What do you pick up?

AVIVA BREEN: No. There's great optimism, and there's great enthusiasm, and there's great hope that they can really accomplish. These are very dedicated people who are really committed to this issue, and want to make a change. And so there's great hope and optimism for doing something within their own country.

DAN OLSON: Is there some degree of political risk to them, or even more than political risk to them for taking on this cause and other causes like this regarding human rights? Do you sense that this is now kind of you're on the-- the learning curve is rising here, and in a good direction?

AVIVA BREEN: I don't think there's generally political risk simply because they're talking about domestic violence or even changing the law. Some of this is tempered by the fact that those countries trying to get into the EU have to have some kind of law on the books, so that helps.

But even before that, I don't think there's political risk specifically, unless if we do a fact finding report and we say the prosecutors aren't doing this or none of the doctors noticed that all the women in Nepal who were coming in with burns couldn't possibly have all had accidents on the same day or-- so it's the politics, perhaps, of suggesting that their system is not working properly.

And when we-- in fact, when we did our report in Bulgaria, there were a number of judges who were-- the prosecutors were offended because they were saying, look, we don't have any law to work with, which was true. And the judges were really offended. We spent a very long time with-- we had a judge come to one of our meetings outside of the Sofia area. And I spent a really long time talking to him.

And I guess I persuaded him because he gave me his copy of the Bulgarian laws in Bulgarian to take home with me as a gift. So I think I had convinced him that we weren't attacking the judges or we weren't saying the judges were bad. We were simply saying that the system didn't allow for acknowledgment that this was an appropriate issue to bring before the court.

DAN OLSON: So do you ever see overnight results or do you take this view of 30 years?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, maybe somewhere in between that. Bulgaria passed a domestic violence law two years ago. So that's about probably close to 10 years from the time we started working with them, which is really quite amazing. And the other thing is we're doing a lot of work primarily in Eastern Europe and the newly independent states, former Soviet Union. A number of those countries have drafted our drafting, or in the process of promoting their own laws.

So it's kind of mushrooming. In fact, I have a copy of a draft law from Albania sitting on my desk to analyze and to look at and to say what we think the strengths and weaknesses are. So, no, it's not 30 years. Maybe 30 years from when people there first started thinking about it. But no, it's coming. It's coming.

DAN OLSON: Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights Board chair Aviva Breen. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. One of Breen's visits to Nepal on behalf of women's rights there led her organization to help create a school for children. Here's more of our conversation.

AVIVA BREEN: It's an elementary school for the very poorest children in a particular village. There isn't really free public education in Nepal. Government run schools, but there are fees and uniforms and all of that. So the very poorest of the poor often do not attend school. This is in a small village.

We have two focuses for the school. One was anti-child labor, because there is some data that shows with eight years of education, there is the possibility of getting employment. And these are children from very, very poor families. The other thing is we had a requirement that there had to be 50% girls in the school, 50% girls, 50% boys.

In the beginning-- in the very beginning of the school, the parents would register their children. And there would be 50% girls. And then on the first day of school, they weren't-- the girls didn't show up and they sent boys instead. So we had to do a lot of work. But now we're very close to the 50%. We've got seven grades. We will have eight grades next year. And then the year after that, we're going to have a graduation and be the first class that will have gone through for eight years.

DAN OLSON: They'd signed their daughters up, but, of course, the boys would show up instead. So how did you finesse that?

AVIVA BREEN: They started taking pictures of the children when they registered. And then they had to match their pictures to see. I mean, it's a very sparse-- it's not our idea of a classroom. It's a very sparse cement building with benches and tables. And the materials are limited, but the children are learning all kinds of things. And it's wonderful.

I think the legislature taught me to have a very incremental approach. It just taught me that you just plug away, you do all the things that you can and wherever-- it'd be nice if we could run 100 schools in Nepal, clearly. And in fact, when we were there, not this last time, but two years ago, we met with some people who were running other little schools in little villages, and everybody had the same problems.

And the other thing about our school that's unique is we give the children lunch every day. So they have one nutritious meal. Some of these children walk two hours to get to school and to get home. So they're hungry. And so, yes, you could always-- when I'm there, I think the big black hole is so big and there's so much to do. But no, I just-- I feel very fortunate that I can do what I can do. And I think you just can only do as much as you can do.

DAN OLSON: When you tell your fellow Americans and neighbors and taxpayers and citizens and so on about these trips to Nepal and other places where you see deep poverty, what's their reaction? Do you get a response that, well, it's too bad, or do they feel like, gosh, we could really do a lot more to help?

AVIVA BREEN: I generally-- of course, the circles and people say, that's really wonderful. Then I ask them to contribute for that. So if you can't go there, you could always write a check. I tell them that it only costs $150 to support a child in the Nepal school for a whole year, $150. And that includes lunch every day.

So to us, it's very little. And so, yes, I mean, people know that there's poverty. I mean, there are things going on all over the world. I haven't had much of a cynical reaction. I mean, some people are more interested than others, but mostly, I haven't found people to be very cynical.

DAN OLSON: Where do you get your irrepressibly sunny disposition? I mean, you've seen a fair amount of tough stuff in your life. I mean, you have a good life, obviously, but you've seen some pretty tough stuff. Where do you get this smile and laugh?

AVIVA BREEN: I don't know because my mother was not a very upbeat person. So I didn't get it from her.

DAN OLSON: Well, she had a hard life. She lost her husband, your father.

AVIVA BREEN: Yes, that's true. That's true. But she just-- she wasn't-- I don't know. I am a glass half full person. There is no question about it.

DAN OLSON: Aviva Breen, she credits her late husband, Stan Breen, with raising her consciousness about social issues and about human rights. When she moved to Minnesota after graduating from college, Breen became an elementary school teacher. At the urging of her husband, Breen entered law school when she was 38. Breen says her work as an attorney with the legal services advocacy project in Saint Paul was her most satisfying job. In between being a teacher and a lawyer, Breen stayed at home to raise four children.

AVIVA BREEN: It was a time when lots of moms were at home. And so there were things that were limiting about it in terms of intellectual stimulation. But I feel like now that I was very lucky to be able to do that. And all my friends-- I mean, we exchanged-- we had kind of child care only. We were all there, and all the kids played together, and we would amuse ourselves. And so it was good.

DAN OLSON: There's some defensiveness among moms who stay at home about that, that it's not intellectually stimulating. I mean, do you encounter that now when you talk with young women and perhaps encourage them, for all I know, to see that?

AVIVA BREEN: One of my daughters is a stay-at-home mom at the moment. But there's lots of things to do. I mean, there are lots of ways to get all kinds of stimulation other than interacting with your kids. And being able to raise your kids the way you'd like to raise them is a definite plus and a value. But there's other things. And I was involved in other community things.

DAN OLSON: Why did you want to become an attorney, a lawyer?

AVIVA BREEN: This is why. Because when I was in Duluth, I got very involved in organizing a group to start an open school in Duluth. I was very interested in that. And I organized a group of very energetic advocates who wanted to get that done. And every time we didn't know what to do the next step, someone said, let's call Harold Frederick. He's a lawyer. He'll know what to do. And I just wanted to know everything that they know because they always know how to do everything.

I didn't have a lifelong ambition to become a lawyer. And in fact, I thought I'd go back to teaching after my kids were in school. And we moved back to Minneapolis. And it was-- my youngest was in kindergarten or first grade. And so I thought it was time to go back to school. And I started exploring programs. And one day I said to my husband, you know what I really want to do is be a lawyer. But I don't know, it's a long time, three years. And he said, well, either take the test or quit talking about it. So I did.

DAN OLSON: So that was the nature of the relationship. He was quite supportive. And he said, honey, if you're going to do it--

AVIVA BREEN: Yes, absolutely. That's right. Do it. Well, he had dreams that we would get really rich and he could quit working.

DAN OLSON: And then when you became an attorney, the legal services advocacy project, what was that?

AVIVA BREEN: It was my ideal job. It was a brand new advocacy unit of legal services. So it was a unit that represented all the legal services programs in the state-- represented clients of all the legal services programs in the state at the legislature. And at that time, 1977, 1978, we actually started operating. There was nobody representing low-income people at the legislature. There just was nobody. And so it was a really exciting time. And it was just the milieu that I wanted to work in.

Two of my notable clients were two organizations. One was called the Minnesota Recipients Alliance, which was an organization of welfare recipients. And the other was what was then called the Consortium for Battered Women, which is now the Coalition for Battered Women. But this was the very beginnings of it. And it was a very loose knit group of women who were providing shelter and other minimal services then to battered women.

DAN OLSON: What events or personalities raised your personal consciousness about women's issues?

AVIVA BREEN: Interestingly enough, my husband was one of them, but his was more social justice and human rights issues. And the women's issues just kind of evolved really out of my work Recipients Alliance and the Consortium for Battered Women. I didn't know anything about domestic violence in 1978 when I started doing this, nor did a lot of people. And actually, I didn't know much about-- I mean, I knew about poverty, and welfare laws in the intellectual sense.

And so it really was through my work and the people I associated with there that probably-- and the women's movement was coming along and/or had been. And the very first time I went over to the legislature was when they were voting on the ERA in 1972. So it was all of that Title Nine, Title Seven. All those things were happening then. So it was kind of everything around me that was happening.

DAN OLSON: The issue of child care comes to the fore, and I have heard numbers, some tens of millions, that have been pulled out in recent years, in the past, few years, six years for subsidized child care for single moms, especially, I think in Minnesota. Some people argue, government really shouldn't be involved that deeply in people's issues, women's issues, including child care. What's your view?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, I would say several things. First of all, child care isn't a women's issue. It's a family issue. And it affects everybody. And second of all, I remember making an argument in front of the Hennepin County Board in the early '80s, and that was the argument then that, we shouldn't be doing all this. The reason we have all these people wanting it is because we're providing it. And if we didn't provide it, nobody would come and ask for it.

I think it's part of the mix. I think it's part of the picture. I think it's part of what society has to do. We're one of the only societies that really struggles over whether there should be any kinds of programs and any kind of subsidies for early childhood education. It's really quite common everywhere, and it's understood to be a huge part of children's development and a part of what is appropriate. And so I just don't buy the argument that we shouldn't provide it.

DAN OLSON: So I guess it's pretty clear, Aviva Breen believes that government is a problem solver, part of the solution in people's lives.

AVIVA BREEN: I think government serves a lot of different functions. And I think that is one very appropriate function. And it's not the whole-- it's not the sole function, but I think it's part of the solution. And I think it's a very appropriate role for government. I think any way that we can-- that government can help make workplaces more family friendly in the ways that are appropriate for government is good for everybody.

DAN OLSON: Have employers stepped up to the line, in your view, in the years that you've been watching this? I mean, it's hard for me to tell how effective employers are at delivering services for employees, if it turns out it's a good investment for them, or what's happening on that?

AVIVA BREEN: That's a complicated issue. For a while, there was a big push for employer provided child care and on site child care. And it's a very complicated issue. It can be good for some families or not. It depends if they work near their homes. It depends if they have some kids in school and some in child care.

I mean, there's so many complicated issues and it's-- and for employers to provide it, there have to be enough families with young children who need it. And obviously, the kids don't stay that age the whole time. And so I think employers-- many employers have and many employers aren't able to. And I think it is complicated. So I think where they have and have been able to, it's really been wonderful.

DAN OLSON: Going just a moment to people who you represented and worked with for a time, people who are poor, women who are poor, are you a fairly judgmental person? Do you have a corner of your mind that says quietly to yourself, if not actually to other people, you're not doing the right thing, you need to do this differently in your life, you're making mistakes, listen to me, I can tell you how to do it better?

AVIVA BREEN: I don't operate that way. And I think we all see people in our lives who we would like to tell to do things differently. I mean, that includes my own kids. But, no, I'm not. And what I learned when I worked for legal services, and I worked there for six and a half years, is that people do get into all kinds of holes and all kinds of problems. And then it seems that one thing happens on top of another and issues pile on.

And every people-- a friend of mine, Esther Wattenberg, once used the term people holding on by their fingernails. And it just really described for me what many low-income face. It's just one thing after another. If the car breaks down, they try and fix it. Then the-- I don't know. Then the boiler breaks, and then one of the children gets sick, and then something. Things just happen. And they happen to all of us, but we have the means to move on, and they don't.

DAN OLSON: So we're spending some time now in this country looking at what's a better way to help folks like that who need assistance, either through the-- some would say, heavy hand of government, the bureaucratic end of government or so-called faith-based initiatives. Do you have a view on that?

AVIVA BREEN: Well, I don't think anything's either or. I think there are lots of many of the nonprofits that I worked with over the years at the legislature who served low-income people. We didn't call them faith-based then, but they were faith-based. They are and they do fabulous work advocating on behalf of low-income people. So I think that there are many ways to serve. I don't think there's only one way. And I don't think low-income people need to be served by proselytizing. But I do think that there are many ways to serve them, and the more the better.

DAN OLSON: Aviva Breen, a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

AVIVA BREEN: Thank you.

DAN OLSON: Aviva Breen chairs the Board of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. She's former director of Minnesota's Legislative Commission on the Economic Status of Women. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

GARY EICHTEN: These Voices of Minnesota interviews coming to you as part of our Midday program, first hour of our Midday program. Good morning. I'm Gary Eichten, inviting you to stay tuned. We've got another Voices of Minnesota interview coming up on human rights.

And then over the noon hour, we're going to cover the governor's budget proposal being released even as we speak. The governor proposing some $34 billion in state spending. We'll find out where he wants to spend all that money. That's coming up at 12:00. Right now, let's get back to our Voices of Minnesota program.

DAN OLSON: Minnesota is home to many who have escaped countries where governments commit human rights abuses. 80-year-old Robert Treuer is one of those who has found a home here. Robert Treuer grew up in a Jewish family in Austria. His father was a shopkeeper and a political activist. His mother was a musicologist.

In 1938, Nazi youth gangs roamed Austria's cities. Jews, young and old, religious and secular, became their targets. Treuer and his parents escaped Austria before World War II and before the Holocaust. Their journey eventually brought them to the United States after long stopovers in Great Britain and Ireland.

As an adult in this country, Robert Treuer worked as a laborer, a union organizer, a high school teacher and a writer. He moved to Minnesota in 1958 with his first wife and three children and became a tree farmer in the northern part of the state. The Treuer Family Tree Farm is 400 acres in gently rolling land near Bemidji. Mostly red pine grow there.

There's a small lake and some marshland. The family home is surrounded by tall pine trees. I talked with Robert Treuer at his kitchen table. Treuer is lean, medium height, plenty of hair left on his head. He wears glasses and on this day was dressed in blue jeans, a flannel shirt and a down vest.

Robert Treuer, you were born and raised in Vienna, Austria, and you got out just in the nick of time. Say just a word about dashing across the trolley tracks there and escaping some folks who were after you. What was that all about?

ROBERT TREUER: I was 12 years old. This was after the Germans invaded and annexed Austria, and the persecution of Jews began promptly. Passes were issued that identified your religion. I was identified on a streetcar on my way to school by a group of Hitler Youth, who came after me. And I leaped off the streetcar, ran in front of it as it started to move and took off. By the time the streetcar had left, I was gone and out of their sight.

DAN OLSON: What do you think they were intent on doing to you?

ROBERT TREUER: I would have been beaten up at a minimum.

DAN OLSON: And you were seeing this perhaps on a daily basis?

ROBERT TREUER: Yes, I witnessed it. And fortunately, we escaped through my father's presence. He was politically savvy. He knew what was coming, even though my mother and other relatives did not want to believe it. And he insisted that we make every effort to escape. And we did.

DAN OLSON: How did you escape?

ROBERT TREUER: My mother, a musician, a musicologist, was persuaded to apply for work with an employment agency in England. You could not enter another country such as England, much less the United states, unless you had proof of employment or someone to sponsor you. And she applied for a job and did get a job as a live in maid in an English household in the countryside. Somehow, and I think through some refugee organization, a place was found for me, because my mother's employers did not want another child in the household, would not take me. And a place was found for me in a boarding school in London.

At the border between Germany and Belgium, the train was stopped, of course, searched. All refugees were ordered off the train. And we were standing in a cluster of about 30 or 40 people on the platform, and we were immediately surrounded by heavily armed storm troopers. And the train left.

Mother very short, blond, blue-eyed, took a quick look around. We stood in the middle of this moil of people. And she grasped me by the wrist and said, come, and elbowed her way through the crowd between two surprised guards and on into the station. The people were removed. We sat in the station. And I got my first cup of coffee there as we sat and sat and sat. And finally, after an interminable time, another train came.

And being a child, impatient, I wanted to get up. And I took one look at my mom and she just sat there stony faced and did not move. And people got off. Other people got on. And everything in me said, get up, get up, but I didn't. And suddenly my mom said, come. And we rushed out across the platform, climbed on the train as it started to move. And of course, a few seconds later, we're across the border in Belgium and on with our voyage.

DAN OLSON: If she hadn't grabbed you by the hand and pulled you away quickly into the train station, who knows what would have happened.

ROBERT TREUER: She saved my life, just as my father saved our lives by insisting that we make every effort to get out.

DAN OLSON: The time in Great Britain was good because you were alive, but not so happy. You couldn't get into a particular school. What happened there?

ROBERT TREUER: One of the ironies of life. The school, which had agreed to take me in, when the headmaster of the school caught sight of me, said I could not enter. He could not accept me. He said, this boy is not Jewish. This was an Orthodox school. My hair was cut. I had no knowledge of Hebrew. I had not been brought up in a religious household at all.

I failed every quiz he gave me and he said, no, we cannot compromise the integrity of the school. And it was explained to him that even at 12 years of age, if I was caught by the authorities not being where I was supposed to be, I was subject to deportation. He said, I'm sorry, we can't take him. And I had to leave.

And another school was found for me. And that turned out to be a snake pit, something straight out of Dickens, where, of course, I had virtually none of the language. I could not be sent to classes. And before the first day was out, I had been sexually abused and I had no one to tell and no way of telling. And like other victims of sexual abuse, took it to be my fault.

DAN OLSON: You were separated from your mother. I mean, you were prevented from living together.

ROBERT TREUER: Of course. And I had no way of reaching her, not that she could have done anything. But fortunately, an uncle, who had escaped and was living in London, came to visit me. And while I didn't tell him, he could tell something was very wrong. And through his efforts, he made connections with the American Friends Service Committee, well, the English counterpart, the Quakers.

And after a stay of about three or four weeks in a refugee camp for orphans of the Spanish Civil war, which the British had provided in the heart of London, in Kensington Park, home of Peter pan, which was run by a Viennese refugee who had known my father, I was taken to the entrance gate of that camp from the boarding school and met by the director and his wife. And he said, are you Fritz Treuer your son? I said, yes. Where is he? Back in Vienna, run.

And I ran. I ran into the camp and a mass of dark haired, dark skinned children looking just like me came running toward me. They spoke Spanish. I spoke German. And I was swept up and disappeared. One more child in Kensington Park. And that's where I found a safe haven. And later, a legal one was found for me a few weeks later through the good services of the Quakers in a boarding school in Waterford, Ireland, which a few years ago, I went back to visit to give my thanks because they too saved my life.

And that wonderful school took me in. And there I stayed until months later, my father managed to escape from Vienna after harrowing experiences. And we were reunited and through great good luck found a sponsor in the United States entirely by chance. We had no relatives.

My father had an acquaintance, who had a son in New York, who could not sponsor us. He had already sponsored the maximum number of people, who put a 3 by 5 card on the bulletin board of the New York Athletic Club saying this family needs a sponsor to save their lives, et cetera, et cetera. And when he came out from lunch, the card had gone, and he had no idea who took it. Somebody took it, and then provided the necessary affidavit that enabled us to come to the United States. We had no idea who this man was.

DAN OLSON: Literally, you did not meet him and/or know him at that point.

ROBERT TREUER: No. We were met at the boat by someone he sent, a man who had waited many hours of what was late, who met us. And he said, my name is Mr. Gemütlich. I am agent for Mr. So-and-so who sponsored you. He sent me. Welcome. Mr. so-and-so is glad to have enabled you to escape, but he expects you will make no demands on him, et cetera, et cetera.

And my mother, being feisty, bristled, and was about to tell him that we had no intentions of making any demands on him, dad, plucking at her sleeve. But as matters turned out, a friendship developed between this gentleman and my parents and they corresponded.

And long after their deaths, I found a letter from this gentleman addressed to my father a few months after our landing in New York, by which time we had settled in a small town in Ohio. And the letter said, Dear Mr. Treuer, I am in receipt of your check for $2 and some cents. And I know how hard it is for you to come up with this money. I consider this payment in full and will accept no further.

DAN OLSON: The debt was repaid as far as he was concerned.

ROBERT TREUER: Yes.

DAN OLSON: Robert Treuer explaining how he and his mother escaped Austria before World War II. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olsen.

The Treuer family, mother, father and son Robert, survived and thrived in the United States. Treuer lives in a part of Northern Minnesota, once covered with thick stands of white pine. The trees were clear cut in the late 19th and early 20th century, and then white settlers tried to farm the land. But as Treuer and others knew, trees, not farm crops, are what the land is suited for. Here's more of our conversation.

ROBERT TREUER: This had been, when we moved here in 1958, a truly abandoned farm. Several families had tried to make a go of it farming here. And in the sandy soil and the short growing season, it just didn't work out for them.

DAN OLSON: Because when we dig down a foot, what do we find underneath?

ROBERT TREUER: You don't even have to go on foot and you find sand. And of course, when the White settlers first came here in the early 1900s, there was a covering of humus, some rich black dirt. But it didn't take very long to use that up. And then in the drought of the 1930s and the Dust Bowl and the forest fires that swept through this country, through the slash left behind by the logging, the timber barons, there wasn't very much left. And people tried desperately. When we moved here, we saw the remnants and the signs of it in the abandoned farm machinery and the many, many attempts to make a go of it.

DAN OLSON: Yeah, part of me wants to say, what were they thinking? They must have known something about farming, looked at the country and saw its trees, not fields. Why would we try to make a living farming?

ROBERT TREUER: When they came, there were no trees. When the settlers came, the logging companies had come and gone. And it didn't take them long at all. Across a little lake from here on the hillside is the site, I'm told, of the last log drive on the upper Mississippi. And that was in the early 1920s. And a very old man who participated then as a boy told me about it. And that was the end of it. The logging boom was so short-lived. In the span of 20 or 25 years, it started and went to its full boom, no pun intended, and ended.

DAN OLSON: And the area is changed forever, still not recovered, or recovered in a different way?

ROBERT TREUER: Recovered perhaps in a different way. Perhaps 40 miles from here, there's a 40 acre tract, which, through a surveyor's error, was missed when the logging companies came through. It's referred to as the lost 40.

DAN OLSON: Have you seen it?

ROBERT TREUER: I have seen it, and I have taken my children to it. And they have gone and shown it to their friends. And it gives you a hint, a little teasing insight of what this country would have been like. I was told once by the late Roger Jourdain of Red Lake that he had been told when he was a boy by a very old man, now, this goes back, that when the storyteller was a boy walking from the village of Redby to the village of Red Lake before the timber was cut, it was at high noon on a clear day, so dark that you did not see the sun and it was almost like evening.

DAN OLSON: The canopy of the great white pine?

ROBERT TREUER: The canopy of the great white pine.

DAN OLSON: Planting trees, how did you learn to become a tree farmer? That must have been a very steep learning curve.

ROBERT TREUER: Through the good offices of the County extension service, which at that time had a forester on duty. I'd worked on a farm as a youngster, and I knew that I didn't know-- I knew enough to know I didn't know enough. And I didn't fully appreciate the climate or the shortness of the growing season and so on.

But the foresters said, look, this used to be forest around here. The state has a program. Tree seedlings are available at low-cost. The County has a tree-planting machine. I didn't at the time, what that was. It was a device that you pull with a tractor, which plows a furrow, and you sit astride at the furrow and set seedlings into the furrow, which closes behind you through the packing wheels of the planting machine.

And we thought, why not? That was something beyond the why not that we never talked about, but that was there. And that was the idea of giving something back to the land that took us in. In the day-to-day efforts that seemed pretty remote, we couldn't even begin to picture what it would look like. But I see it today. And I go out and walk in the tree plantation and I am in a cathedral.

DAN OLSON: You did have to go off and get a paycheck sometimes from different locations. You worked in the federal government, Office of Economic Opportunity, someplace else, too. What was that all about?

ROBERT TREUER: Well, in the beginning, I took any job that I could get. I think the first job I got around here was in construction labor. I didn't last very long because the contractor found out I had been a union organizer and was afraid I would organize the workforce and I got fired. I then got a job as a radio announcer at less than minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera. You do what you have to do.

DAN OLSON: You burned out on the labor organizing in Wisconsin, in Sheboygan, I think it was. That was a rough time. That was rough stuff. You were up against-- did you describe this person as a feudal baron?

ROBERT TREUER: It was the coal and plumbing fixtures company, which is to this day in a company town and owned by one family, very paternalistic. And the strike there was very long. It was set at the time to be one of the longest, most violent strikes in American labor history. I think that's overstated.

Eventually, the strike was one of at least seven or eight years in the courts because the company had violated the federal laws in deliberately causing and creating the strike. And eventually, the union won. It was back. It's back in the plant now. Relations are amiable. And the real history has turned a few cogs.

DAN OLSON: But you did encounter violence at one turn in the strike, which I think you've written, gave you a very disconcerting, discouraging insight into human relations and how humans react.

ROBERT TREUER: If violence solved human problems, we wouldn't have any left, would we? And sometimes, when you get very angry and very frustrated, and you think of retaliation and eventually if you live long enough, you find out that's counterproductive. And it destroys a part of you as well as of the enemy. So choices have to be made. And my choice was I did not want to live a life of retribution. I wanted to find a different way of living.

DAN OLSON: Writer and Northern Minnesota tree farmer Robert Treuer. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. Robert Treuer's second wife was a member of a Northern Minnesota Ojibwe band, and Treuer was adopted into an Ojibwe family. He has four children by the second marriage.

Treuer has written several books. In one titled, The Tree Farm, he recounts learning traditional Ojibwe ways, including gathering wild rice. Ricing is a late summer activity in a canoe. One person sits in front and uses two sticks to bend and knock the rice into the canoe, while the second person propels the canoe forward with a long pole. Here's more of our conversation.

ROBERT TREUER: You and your partner are quite often debate on who is the best knocker. That is knocking the rice into the canoe is against who is the best poller. And the traditional way of sorting this out is that the person who does not want to pole, well, that's usually both of you, will drop the pole on the head of the one who is knocking rice sitting in the seat. And you do that often enough. Then the one knocking rice says, here, let me pole. And that settles the argument.

DAN OLSON: So I'm looking into the personality of Robert Treuer and trying to get to the bottom of it. And here, you're polling along and some metal piece on the end of the pole has gone into the bottom. And you'll be darned if you're going to lose that. And so what did you do? You jump in and you're up to your neck in water.

ROBERT TREUER: Yeah. And all you had in the water is you dive down and try for the duck bill at the end of your pole.

DAN OLSON: Now, why is this such an important piece of equipment?

ROBERT TREUER: Well, it makes it a lot easier. And you need either a fork stick tied to the end of the pole or one of these store bought duck bells, one or the other. And once you are in the middle of a rice field, you don't want to-- and you lose, say, the duck bell or the fork stick, the only remedy is to retrieve it or you leave the rice field, you go back on land, you cut another one, you lose most of the day and the harvest. So, yes, we lost the duck bell. And yes, I jumped overboard and I dove down and dug around in the muck, and I found it. And we were back into ricing. Yes.

DAN OLSON: Robert Treuer voice and eyes fill with emotion when he reflects on his life and on the many people who have helped him along the way, starting as a child, when his parents led him out of Nazi controlled Austria, and including people who helped him make a life in Northern Minnesota 50 years ago, and then marrying into and being adopted into an Ojibwe family. Here's more of our conversation.

ROBERT TREUER: One of the greatest beauties of Northern Minnesota and largely unrecognized, is the beauty of a traditional native culture. And I have been truly blessed to have been permitted to participate in it. I'll share just one little anecdote with you.

One day a few years ago, a neighbor stopped by. He said, did you know that so-and-so died? Fairly young native woman with five children who had died of cancer. She fought it as courageously as she could and finally succumbed. And he said, we're going to keep fire for her. We'd like you to come. And this means in the traditional custom, building a fire and keeping it going day and night for four days and four nights throughout the burial process.

And as we sat around the fire, it was a somewhat damp, cool evening, the woman's five children sat with us. And there were perhaps 10 or 15 of us sitting around the fire at that time. And the woman's sons kept the fire going. And as the children sat there, sandwiched between adults, some of whom were relatives, some of whom were neighbors, it didn't have to be said, it was just there. You will be cared for. You will be sheltered. You will be loved.

This attitude is so embedded in part and parcel of Native culture. There's a richness and a love here, which I relish. And I am indeed blessed in this long life of mine, not only by the love of my large family, but of the larger family, which has taken me in. And the land that was taken away from the Indians made room for me. And the Indian people of this area have taken me in and I am grateful.

DAN OLSON: Robert Treuer, a pleasure talking with you. Thanks so much for your time.

ROBERT TREUER: Thank you.

DAN OLSON: Northern Minnesota tree farmer and writer Robert Treuer. One of his books titled, The Tree Farm, recounts his family's escape from pre-World War II Austria and his time in the United States. You've been listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olsen.

GARY EICHTEN: And this is Midday coming to you here on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten inviting you to-- well, a quick reminder here, by the way. If you missed part of Dan's interviews, they're on our website, minnesotapublicradio. Org, all of our programs archived, minnesotapublicradio.org.

All right. We're going to break for some headlines. When we come back, we're going to dissect the governor's state budget, which is, well, even as we speak, is still being released. We'll get to that right after headlines.