Sever the existing racial segregation, I liked it in Richmond. The city with its many single-family houses, all surrounded by gardens, with its avenues and parks was beautiful. As in Hamburg, I was passionate about walking for hours. I found it pleasant that Richmond was so much quieter than the more populous Hamburg. When the weather was warm, people would sit on the porch and chat with passersby. Today, you almost don’t find anything like that. The people in Richmond also seemed much friendlier to me than those in Germany. I felt quite comfortable at school at first, partly because the pressure was much less. Despite strict discipline in the German Talmud Torah School, where the children often played tricks on the teachers, the classes in Richmond behaved much more orderly. I found the classes too easy at first and was surprised at how poorly informed many of the male and female teachers were - there were almost exclusively female teachers, in contrast to Germany, where I had almost only male teachers - about the world outside the United States and how poorly educated they seemed to me overall. In the traditional subjects, I was far superior to my American peers because of my German schooling, and within a few weeks I was transferred to the eighth grade. That had its advantages and disadvantages.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 69f (translation)