"Lest we forget . . ."

I mentioned that I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. Someone asked if I could tell my father's story.

As it turns out, my dad (who is now 89 years old) was recently corresponding with one of his cousins (who is five or ten years younger) about how they and their families escaped Germany in the late '30s and early '40s.

I was more or less familiar with my dad's story:

He left his family and home in Nuremberg, Germany, on Friday, August 24th, exactly one week before the German army crossed the Polish border and launched WWII.

"It was the last chance for a Jewish boy approaching his 18th birthday to get to England from our region of Germany via the Kindertransport," my Dad wrote. (As it turns out, no Kindertransport trains left his region after that.)

The deadline for getting my British visa papers to the transport organizers in Germany was a Monday in early August 1939.

We all knew the signs that Germany was preparing to attack Poland: The propaganda made it OBVIOUS! Of course we could not guess the exact date when this would happen, but the signs were familiar from the earlier strikes (Austria, then Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia!)

So, the critical Monday for being part of the Kindertransport was a week away. I prayed that we could receive the needed papers from England by Wednesday, to be SURE that all was in order. Wednesday's mail brought nothing...

"So, maybe Thursday? PLEASE!!!"

No dice...

Thursday night's prayer: "We are running out of time, Lord! Please, give us the assurance we need that You care: You KNOW that unless we (the Jewish office in Nürnberg) receive and forward the papers on Friday, there is no way that we can make the Monday deadline for getting me on this Kindertransport!!! PLEASE, Please, please...."

We spoke with Edith Abraham at the Jewish congregational office: "Sorry, it has not come. So... you'll be on the next transport, in September..."

But I felt VERY strongly there would be no September Kindertransport from Frankfurt.

That evening I prayed for a miracle, having not the slightest idea how that could possibly happen.

(The clock was ticking, and it was 11:59:59 — if not already 12:00:00+!)

On the Monday after the weekend, Mutti ["Mom" or "Mommy"--JAH] spoke again with Miss Abraham . . . who surprised her with the statement, "ERNEST IS IN!"

I stood near Mutti as she turned towards me and smiled with a tear in her eye, nodding towards me. I said, "PLEASE, let me talk to her!"

So, I took the receiver and heard Edith Abraham repeat: She had called the appropriate office in Frankfurt and confirmed that I would be part of the next Kindertransport to London, scheduled for mid-August.

I questioned her: "Friday evening, you told Mutti that the visa had not arrived. The deadline for getting it to the Frankfurt office was today. So, how could this be? Do you not see the contradiction? I MUST KNOW!!!"

Miss Abraham understood and explained: "I happened to be in the office Saturday morning, when the mail arrived. And I noticed that one of the letters looked like it might be the papers that we have been waiting for. I grabbed it, opened it, and
it was indeed your visa!

"So, congratulations: you don't have to wait until September..."

Dad has commented innumerable times: Miss Abraham, by all rights, "shouldn't" have been in the office on Saturday. After all, Saturday is Shabbat, Sabbath, the day when all Jewish offices everywhere are closed. But she was there to get the message (and forward it)--a message without which, as my father is fond of saying, there might, very likely, be none of his offspring.

What of other family members?

I have a few clues.

One uncle, due to his political views "and, I assume activities" (said my father) forced him to flee from the Nazis before anyone else in my father's extended family. That was in the early 1930s, probably 1934.

Other family members began leaving later in the '30s.

My dad says he was invited to spend a few weeks one summer (I would have to guess it was either in 1936 or 1937) with his great aunt and uncle and their children in Rinteln, not far from Hamlin (famed for its "Pied-piper").

I have only heard my dad tell this story once:

I remember the terrible experience of visiting some friends of [my cousins] the R_____ family whose breadwinner had a small shop. The shop became the object of Nazi vandals. The vandals posted or smeared some anti-Jewish stuff on the store window. The Jewish storekeeper was later caught using his camera to take pictures of the hateful slogan. The result: He was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Although released and returned to his family a few weeks later, he was by then a broken human being.

My relatives asked me whether I really wanted to be along on the visit to this man's home, and I agreed to go--but have never lost the memory of seeing and hearing this broken being, alive, but totally unable to stop crying, unable to relate to his family or to visitors, alive, yet a human wreck. Why did they bother to return him home? (He died a week or two after our visit.)

The Jews in Germany knew things were bad, but they didn't think it would get that bad (as bad as it eventually became).

The major turning point, however, was Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.

As a result of the events that night, "We were driven out of our apartment in Nürnberg and our grandfather lost most of his considerable possessions (large home, furniture, equipment) in Erlangen, just about overnight.

"Our Uncle Max owned a significant share of a celluloid factory in Nürnberg being their chief European salesman by virtue of his command of languages. He lost all that in 1938 [Kristallnacht], but fortunately had foreseen events and moved much of his wealth to Bolivia, South America - and thus was able to provide desperately needed support to branches of the family who joined him in La Paz, including my family."

It was what happened to his grandfather, however, that most impacted my dad. Primarily, I believe, because he accompanied his mother to his grandfather's (his mother's father's) apartment two days after Kristallnacht.

Most terrible for him was seeing the "shiny black Blùthner [or Flügel--he has identified it as one or the other at different times] baby-grand" that his Grosspapa kept on the second floor. "It stood and witnessed the destruction of its environment in Erlangen--and then vanished after Kristallnacht."

More details about Kristallnacht:

On the second [Thursday] in November 1938, I was sent home from school, discovering that Jewish families all over had been visited by Nazi squads overnight -- and MOLESTED....

My brothers came home from school and told gruesome tales they were told by fellow students in their respective classes.

Mutti came home and demanded, "WHERE IS PAPA?" (He came home around 4 or 5 pm, with more tales of what he had seen and learned around town.)

Mutti tried to reach her dad on the phone all afternoon: "No response!?!"

We called friends in Erlangen and finally reached someone who said all Jewish men were under arrest: "Schutzhaft" they called it....

What were we to do that night???? We had no car, no safe destination, no plan for ecape. So, my parents decided to spend the night in our second-floor apartment, hoping that the presence of 11 other non-Jewish families might be more of a deterrence than being "out there" where nobody knew us.

Mutti decided to take the bus to Erlangen in the morning. I asked her permission to come with her.

Mutti had a key to allow us access into her dad's home. The interior had been DESTROYED: Wild, angry hoodlums systematically had gone through the house, using axes to knock through every door, into every piece of furniture, painting, breaking the back of every bookcase, smashing all kitchen stuff, destroying every piece of
clothing in closets, all dishes in the kitchen cabinets, every light fixture... all EXCEPT my Aunt Lilly's wedding gift from her parents: The wonderful small Flügel!

It stood alone in the center of the living room, not a scratch, not a particle of dust, waiting to be carried off in triumph by the leader of the band of criminals who, no doubt, considered themselves 'honorable citizens' of their town.

If someone really so treasured that instrument, I have little doubt they took care of it over the years -- and it may be there to this very day, still waiting to be redeemed by the rightful owner...

Dad has said his grandfather was very special to him.

You have a right to ask, "Why was Großpapa 'SPECIAL to you'?"

Mutti knew him well, and she was much concerned that he should NOT see the devastation that those hoodlums had perpetrated in his home. How could he cope with the anger and grief?

She tried to persuade the Erlanger Polizei to make sure he would be directed to come to us in Nürnberg DIRECTLY from the lockup where he was detained.

Well, they released him without saying anything; he went to his home, saw what had been done, accepted it as DONE -- called us, and then took the next bus to come to us.

His example inspired me for the rest of my life: "DO NOT PANIC -- the Lord watches over you!"

So what happened to Dad's family after Kristallnacht?

Writing to his cousin, my dad said that, after Kristallnacht, he was "astounded — and SCARED!"

My Mother threatened to take us three boys and LEAVE if our Dad persisted in his attempt to 'outlast' Hitler and the Nazis, as he appeared determined to try and do! She wanted us to have a FUTURE. . . . Of course, so did our Dad. The question was really: 'How do we do that?'

Again, continuing with the story as my dad told it in a letter to his cousin:

When I read in your last letter that your mother told your dad that she was leaving with the 3 boys, it reminded me of what my mother told me many years ago. She told my father that if he wanted to stay in Germany , feel free to do so, but that she and Walter were getting out of here. It seems to me that the ladies had more foresight than the men.

Dad's cousin replied,

I think that a lot of Jewish men who fought in the first world war, like your father and mine, just thought that this could not happen to them, that they were excluded from these things. In addition, my father really was not prepared to live in Cuba and then in the U.S.A. He did not speak the English language, and as a "Geschaeftsfuehrer" in Berlin he had no ability to make a living in the "Ausland." It so happened that we were on the very last transport out of Berlin on October 19, 1941. The next one never made it to freedom.

My dad replied:

As I recall, [my parents and two brothers] left for Italy [and thence to Chile and Bolivia] at the end of December 1939. The 'marital debate' over emigration was settled in 1939.

And as for his Grosspapa? Dad said his parents left him in the Jewish Altersheim [retirement home] in Nürnberg when they fled the country in December 1939.

I believe our grandfather . . . died of malnutrition (starvation) in the "model for seniors" concentration camp Theresienstadt a couple of months or so after being deported there from the Altersheim.

I can "see" his picture even now, with his hat, standing next to his special friend Max Goldschmidt and all the other Jewish men from the Erlangen Gemeinde [community], assembled in the yard of the local police lock-up the morning after Kristallnacht. He was such a wonderful example to them — and to ALL of us!

--I have posted this here "lest we forget."

One additional item: In case you can read German, my sister found on the web a family story written by one of my dad's [second cousins once removed(??)] named Sigmund Sachs. You can find amazing details about my dad's extended family--especially about his mother's side of the family--beginning at the bottom of p. 17 with the story of Onkel [Uncle] Max, a highly successful salesman.

My father has often spoken of him. Onkel Max knew seven languages and became the international salesman for the Celluloidwarenfabrik Gebr. Wolff GmbH, Fürther Straße of Nürnberg. Eventually he bought the company. It was he who helped my father's parents and brothers escape to Bolivia during the War.

Sachs wrote (in English translation from my sister, p. 18 in the referenced paper):

He was always fair and helped many as was needed. Later he helped over 50 friends and their families . . . not only that he helped them make it out of Germany, he also sent the visas and affidavits and took them all into his home in La Paz Bolivia until they could manage their lives on their own.

They all called him "Our Maxel." He had only one dream--to go back to Germany. But this dream never came true. He died in La Paz.

He was married to his one Nürnberger Christian friend.

None of us who survived will ever forget him.

--Sounds very much how my father has described him.

Further down the page (on p. 18), Sachs also describes Dad's grandfather ("Onkel Iwan") and Onkel Iwan's four daughters--my grandmother and her three sisters, Ida (my grandmother), Frieda, Nelly and Lilly.

Kinda weird to read one's own family history written by someone else!
******
Ah! While I'm at it.

My sister did a great job of translating another portion of Sachs' story that has broader interest, I think, especially when it comes to the history of the Holocaust.

He writes (again, in English translation thanks to my sister):

Everything seemed to be wonderful [in the early 1900s] and then suddenly difficult times came for Germany but particularly for the Jews.

Germany had a terrible inflation, as in many lands, and that was the time when we first heard the name of Hitler.

That was the start of the fight against the German Jews.

Nürnberg was the stronghold of antisemitism. The worst was the disgusting magazine with the name "Der Stürmer" (The Stormer) from Streicher. This Jewish-hater made all the Jews responsible for all the difficulties we were experiencing.

At the beginning we didn't take things seriously but it got worse from day to day. Those were the years of 1923-1928. And now we were experiencing antisemitism all over the place. The time came when we were ashamed to be Jewish believers.

Fights in the beerhalls and on the streets belonged to daily experiences. The first uniformed Nazis were all over in the streets on their trucks and screamed, "Jews Die! Jews get out! Jews are our misfortune!" etc.

History repeating itself?

One of my sisters visited Westerwald (Stahlhofen am Wiesensee) in Germany with her family this past weekend. (They live in Germany, so it wasn't too big a trip!)

Our dad wished her a safe trip and said, "I found [your destination] on the internet and spent some time with you in my thoughts! . . . I also found a less pleasant story about Westerwald from the New York Times published in November 1988."

Title of the article: For Germany's Jews, the Night Hope Died--by Serge Schmemann. It's a retrospective on what has come to be known as Kristallnacht, an event that, I know, transformed my father's view of the world, but whose transformative effects, in his letter to my sister, he ascribes mostly to his dad. Quoting from the end of the article, he said the following statements were appropriate for his parents, "especially Papa":

[U]ntil the pogrom, many resisted the gathering evidence that they could no longer stay in a place where their ancestors had lived for centuries and for which many had fought in World War I. "I had wanted to emigrate to Australia already in 1934, but my father wouldn't hear of it," Ernst Kahn recalled. "My mother and father were old people, and they said the Germans won't do us any "harm. . . ."

After the pogrom of Kristallnacht, nobody in Germany could plead ignorance any longer. "Inside Germany, there could no more be any doubt that the country was in the hands of a mass murderer, and there were too few who understood that in this situation patriotism meant to stand up and be counted," said Michael Sturmer, a West German historian.

"War on humanity in Germany intensified on the late afternoon of Nov. 9, 1938," Mr. Sturmer said. "But it took the bystanders, near and far, a long time to understand that their own fate was at stake.'"

I have been doing some research--very, very preliminary research--into what is going on in the United States today. The stuff I've found sounds like it's coming from total nut-cases. Or is it?

I haven't gotten much beyond having the following kinds of information presented to me. Now I need to follow up to find the actual text of the Executive Orders and to find independent (Google Earth?) photos of the alleged detention camps.

But, truly: If these things are so, then what kind of society are we heading toward? And when does it become appropriate to "stand up"? When should the freedom-loving Germans have stood up against the Nazis? Clearly, November 9, 1938, was too late. . . . When and where and why was the "point of no return"? Are we past that point in the United States . . . when the Congress can pass trillion-dollar appropriation bills that no one has even read? (See here as well.)

ETA 2/23/09 at 11:10 AM:There are wonderful skeptics who offer reasonable questions to help counter-balance the "nut-case" perspectives. That's one of the reasons I so appreciate blogs in which comments are turned on! Here, for example, are some counter-balancing perspectives--with specific questions to ask--about (at least some of) the alleged concentration camps.

EXAMPLE: You see a large, mostly undeveloped property being patrolled by a bunch of guys with guns?

More than likely, someone started to develop the site without really knowing what they were doing and went bankrupt in the middle of the project.

If that is the case the ownership of the property will pass to the receiver. These properties will typically sit for a few years while they get the legal mess straightened out and all the liens cleared.

I've seen it happen time and time again. The guards are there to protect the receivers from liability. A half completed golf course is a hell of an attractive nuisance for every teenaged wanabe motocross/ BMX racer.

Once all of those hurdles are cleared, you still need someone to step in and redevelop the site. There could be other hurdles in the way of that. It could be that the original developer tried to fill in a protected wetland, or maybe there is a zoning issue that the local government can not resolve.

If you are really curious, check with your local planning commission. The chances are excellent that they will know exactly who owns the site and what the future planes are for it.

Maybe.

Or,

Do you have any idea the type of infrastructure you would need to successfully house 20,000 people, let alone 2 million.

You need water, and plenty of it, you need waste treatment facilities, housing, heat, medical facilities.

Oh, and how are you going to get 2 million people up to Fairbanks Alaska without going through Canada? Oh, yeah, that's right. The Canadians are part of the NWO also.

I guess the main thing is: We need healthy skepticism on both sides!

ETA 2/23/09 at 7:37 PM: My sister added a note this morning concerning some thoughts that resulted from her visit and our dad's letter:

A friend of mine lent me a book recently. [It was] written by Amelie Fried. It told the story about her father. She had no idea what her father and grandparents had gone through in the Nazi time until her husband saw a name in some documents in New York which made him wonder if she had a larger family than she knew... and what a family!!! Almost everyone [was] destroyed in the Hitler regime.

It's amazing what kind of information she was able to get her hands on even though her father had already passed away.

One thing I read I thought I wanted to pass on to you....

She told about her Grandfather gettting beaten up and landing in prison... How she described it reminded me of your grandfather... He ended up going to the police to complain!! They, of course, were not so interested. So he wrote a complaint to Austria where he came from. They ended up writing to the Germans in his town and got a response back... The response made her speechless, and kind of hits me as well to understand--in a sick kind of way--how people could do the things they did those days long ago.

They wrote (I am translating as I can),

On the 18th of May Mr. Fried was insulted in the most crude manner from The NSDP and hit to the ground and then beaten until he was injured. The response from the Police in Ulm was "There was absolutely no rage expressed against Mr. Fried personally. Instead it was only his attribute of being a Jew which was being attacked. Mr. Fried's threats of complaint through the Austrian government makes no impression on us and could only be used against him. Please give us the honor of informing the Austrian consulate that there in no persecution taking place against the mentioned Austrian person.

Mrs. Fried then wrote, "Let that example go over your tongue a few times.... The attack wasn't meant for my Grandfather... it was only meant for his attribute of being a Jew and therefore he shouldn't take it personally, please!"

The perverse thinking of the Nazis was that the Jews were no longer people... They were no longer individuals and therefore it was ok to get rid of them without a bad conscience. They weren't being killed as people, it was only their character of being a Jew.... "The Jews can't really take that personally!"

Mrs. Fried then told about an aunt of hers who still lived in Germany [at the time she wrote the book in 1996]. [The aunt] still had a bad feeling about herself since she was Jewish.... Somehow she still shouldn't [exist]. This was in 1996!!!!

Can you imagine what was done to a whole generation and a half of people... and continues on in the minds of many?

How many people have been told, "You are not meant to be... Please disappear. You are not wanted!!"

And what does Jesus have to say?!