memento mori

Below story is blood…  These are Connections.

I found this the other day in the midst of doing some computer clean up.  I wrote this with my “oma” about 15 years ago.  As far as the religious content is concerned, my father is catholic and my mom is jewish.  I however am agnostic and haven’t been to confession since 2003 when I graduated from a now ex-communicated Catholic college….none-the-less it is interesting in reading how war has impacted so many lives…and will continue to do so.

“This is not a discourse of the underlying meaning of the events of our century. It is only the story of a Jewish girl whose life spanned most of this century and who was caught in and formed by its turbulence. I divided the story into two parts.

Part1 Life in Europe, Growing up Jewish in Germany between the 2 wars, Before and after Hitler, The years as a young, homeless refugee in Italy and Switzerland, finally emigration to the USA.

Part 2 Staring out in the USA, Marriage & war years followed by… Life in Suburbia, Family and career. 1st trip back to hometown (30 yrs after), trip with daughter & grandchildren, looking back and evaluation.

Childhood rather typical of our middle class Jewish milieu; an old Jewish community since the 12th century; beautiful 1000 yr. old town with a fortress on the hill, a Gothic cathedral, cobblestone streets. The United Nation declared the city a World National monument, one of 150 cities so honored. I grew up surrounded by beauty, history, tradition and a loving family. A Jewish community existed for about 1000 yrs, with a rabbi, cantor, teacher, beautiful synagogue, cemetery, next to a Christian cemetery. Our family lived had lived there since the 17th century; the records stopped at the 30 yrs war (1648). Aunts & uncles lived in town, there were cousins to play with and the most beautiful memories are those of my grandparents. They lived on a farm in the country with cows, horses, chicken and geese. In summers we helped with the harvest. There was a “schul” for the 10 Jewish families. We played with the village children, my grandfather had a beer in the pub; we celebrated our grandparents golden wedding there in 1923. Relatives from Chicago came. For the 1st time we saw “real” Americans, “rich” Americans who came with a chauffeur in uniform.

News of the outside world did not penetrate. Berlin and Munich were far away. Rumors of revolutions, of communists, socialists, national socialists made no lasting impression. Nobody paid much attention. We read about skirmishes. Jewish life was integrated. Religion and state were not separate. Religion was part of the school curriculum. The cantor taught religion in the lower grades the rabbi in the higher ones. There were special classrooms for religious instruction of a Jewish, Protestant and Catholic children. Religion was an official subject, one you could flunk. I received a good Jewish background, Hebrew from 3rd grade till graduation 10 yrs. later. My school years were happy ones in contrast to my brothers. Boys and girls went to separate schools. He often got into fights, because schoolmates called the Jewish boys dirty names, ganged up on them while the teachers turned their backs. (My brother became an early admirer of Herzl!) In the early 30′s the political climate heated up. In the elections the parties to the extreme right and the extreme left gained seats. As a teenager by then, I started to get interested in politics and to get worried. But nothing prepared me for the fateful January 30th, 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor. I’ll never forget that afternoon. I was in 10th grade, 15 years old. I walked home from school. Radios were blasting, newspaper boys hustled their “extra, extra”, swastikas waved from public buildings. I knew it would never be the same. My childhood had ended.

In March 1933, the first Jewish man, a young lawyer (25 yrs) was sent to Dachau (1st K.Z.) 6 weeks later he was returned in a coffin: “dead while trying to escape!” At the so-called “free” elections in May there were two ballot boxes: one with a sign YES (agreeing with Hitler’s laws) and the other with a sign NO, disagreeing. Stormtroopers guarded the boxes. You know how the vote turned out! Many people and Jews thought that Hitler, like numerous other chancellors before him, would not last, Jewish community life changed very slowly. (Zionists became more active) Some people left school to learn a trade or to farm in preparation for emigration to Palestine. My school, a private girls’ high school or Gymnasium, was run by nuns. The sisters almost succeeded in ignoring Hitler. They never gave the Hitler salute, which was mandatory. The physics professor, however, strutted around in his Nazi uniform. Some of my classmates no longer invited me to their parties. Young Jewish people in their 20′s started to emigrate. My brother and a cousin left for Palestine in 1935. We implored our parents to leave while it was still possible to transfer assets. My father thought he was too old to start life in a strange country and even if his business was taken from him, he could live from his savings. This opinion was shared by many of his contemporaries and as you all know, they shared the final journey… too the extermination camps, then the gas chambers of Aushwitz. I became the leader of a Zionist youth group. Some of the younger children were saved by the children’s transport to England, some received visas to Palestine or other Countries, Australia, Africa, most of the S. American countries, China and the USA. Some went on the final transport with their parents. One boy was victim of Dr. Mengles’ infernal experiments.

I finished the Gymnasium in the cloistered walls of the convent. Our class of 10 girls was the last to graduate. After 200 years the school was taken over by the state. Any nun who would give up her vows and leave the order could continue to teach. One nun went over to the nazi’s. There was no dance, no prom at our graduation. This is a good place to tell about our Mother Superior. The Nurnberg laws of 1935 specified that Jewish children were to be evicted from state schools. The Bavarian government in Munich sent forms to the Mother Superior on which to list all the Jewish students. She never returned any of the forms. She accepted all the Jewish girls from the state schools of the city and surrounding areas. I fount this out during my first visit back to Bamberg, 30 years later. The Mother Superior of my youth had died, but a classmate of mine was now the Mother Superior and told me the story.

Two days after our solemn and somber graduation, I took the train to Florence, Italy, to study there for 6 months until fall when I started at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. During the summer in Florence, a most beautiful city, and Rome,- yes I had an audience with the pope Pius XII-, Naples and Sicily, I learned a great deal about the Jews of Italy. But that would be the topic for another paper.

Geneva was an exciting city during my stay from 1937-1939. While Hitler marched into Austria and the Sudetenland, while Chamberlain with his umbrella flew to Munich to declare “Peace in our time”, while Mussolini annexed Abyssinia and Hailie Selassie in flowing garments pleaded his case before the League of Nations, while 30 nations met in Evian, on the French side of Lake Geneva, to discuss the fate of the Jews, we the Jewish students from many European countries did not know whether we could use our education, what was going to happen to our families. We exchanged news about visa requirements to just about anywhere. We met at the “Mensa” a cafeteria and social club for the refugee Jewish students, financed, I think by the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) and the Jewish community of Geneva. Conversations were conducted in four or five languages at the same time, a modern tower of Babel. I sometimes wonder what happened to these bright young people.

In summer of 1938 my mother and brother came to Geneva for one week. My brother passing through on the way to the USA. I had told him I could not work on a kibbuz in Israel and working on the land was the only way to build the country; that I had received an affidavit for the USA from the same cousins who had attended our grandparents golden wedding. We agreed we should live in the same country and hopefully be able to send for our parents. The German government had issued a passport to my mother valid for one week… It is difficult to describe our feelings during this week of grace. We tried to persuade my mother to stay, but she refused, knowing that our father would be held hostage. She returned to Germany, my brother went to America. A few weeks later Kristallnacht sealed the fate of most of the remaining Jews in Germany. Consulates of all countries were over run. The American consulate gave out numbers to the applicants. My emigration was handled through the American Consulate in Zurich. Negations were difficult, tedious and I was completely on my own. In order to get the visa after all other papers were approved and I could show a ticket for passage on a ship (all were booked for months), I also needed a passport valid for 6 months, mine was only good for 6 weeks. I went to the German consul in Geneva with my story. It was against German regulations to issue passports to German Jewish refugees, but he said that I reminded him of his daughter who was my age. He gave me the passport, wished me luck and asked me that I would not divulge his name. In April 1939 I left for Geneva. My parents had wanted me to phone from Paris, but I simply could not bring myself to do it. I only wrote a card. My days in Paris were a far cry from the April in Paris, romanticized in films. On the boat train to LeHarve I shared the compartment with an elegant black gentlemen, the Jamaican ambassador to France. I was looking forward to spending some time with him on the trip. He was traveling tourist class; I had a ticket for first class. I said we could meet on the second-class deck, which we did. Passenger from first class, whom no doubt meant well, told me very nicely that in America white young ladies do not associate with black men. I was startled and wondered, whether I was on the way to the right country? I continued to see the black ambassador. Upon arriving in New York, his flowers arrived to me. I stayed with cousins in New York for two weeks then my brother came to take me to Pittsburgh. He wanted to make sure that I would not be seduced to stay in New York.

After two weeks here in Pittsburgh, I became companion to Mrs. Josiah Cohen. It was a wonderful experience. I could not have dreamed of a better introduction into Jewish and American life. She was 90 and a living source of both American and Jewish history. I accompanied her to sisterhood meetings, lunches at the Concordia Club on Sundays with Rabbi and Mrs. Freehof, to board meetings at Montefiore and Shadyside hospitals, to the symphony concerts and the receptions for the guest artists afterwards. When Stravinsky was the honored guest, I interpreted for him, because his English was laborious and he preferred to speak French. She had no children and treated me like a granddaughter. She was proud when I took classes at Pitt and she read my essays with great interest. She beamed like a grandma when I interpreted for her. After all she was born an hour’s ride from my hometown. She realized the desperate situation of my parents. Her nephew, a lawyer (Mr. Rosenberg) from New York, headed a resettlement project in San Domingo. He procured the necessary papers for my parents. My brother and I bought passage. But the war cut off all ship traffic; we also tried Cuba but that also failed.

In the summer of 1941 I got married. In 1943 my husband was drafted. When I wanted to visit him in camp, I had to get special permission to travel, because as a German citizen, I was considered an enemy alien. How could I a victim of Nazi persecution, be an enemy of the USA in whose army my husband was fighting? I fought my way to a top administrator of the immigration office, a most understanding sympathetic Jewish man, who gave me the name of the judge in charge of the swearing in of new citizens. When I told the judge that the Nazis might already have murdered my parents, I noticed he rubbed his eyes. He gave me a date for the swearing in ceremony, one week from our interview, warning me not to notify any news media, because a private swearing in had never taken place in Pittsburgh. I showed up on the appointed day with my two sponsors, one a member of our temple. A few days later I joined my husband. My Americanization had begun. It took me to Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana, and finally Texas, where my husband was stationed at a large army hospital. The most memorable event-, there were many during these war years,- was the Passover Seder at the hospital. Jewish soldiers on crutches, in wheelchairs, Jewish doctors, nurses, technicians, civilian personnel, the commanding officer and his staff, the JDC representatives from Dallas, all joined to celebrate. The colonel, without previous warning, called upon me to say a few words. I had never felt the symbolism of the exodus so palatably. These young soldiers sitting around the long table had risked their lives to save us, and me personally, from the Pharaoh of our time, I thanked them.

When the war was over in 1945, we returned to Pittsburgh. After much deliberation we bought a house in Penn Hills. To this day I still live there. We chose an eastern suburb, because it was close to Squirrel Hill and synagogues and Jewish life and food. We realized it was a big decision to move into a non-Jewish neighborhood. We would probably find ignorance as far as Jews were concerned, maybe even prejudice. But we were convinced we could do more here for Judaism than in Squirrel Hill or other sectarian neighborhoods. We knew our children might be exposed to unpleasant situations, but I hoped they would learn how to cope with them. I wanted to tell the gentile world what had happened to me, my parents, the Jews. What better place than to do so in our living rooms, back yards, garden clubs, bridge clubs, churches and, last but not least our schools? So I decided to go back to Pitt and take the courses necessary for teacher certification. Foreign language teachers were in great demand; the Russians had just shot Sputnik into space. American education was due for an academic overhaul. I accepted a job to teach French and German at our local Penn Hills Senior High School. The administration was very supportive of my approach to teaching not only the language but also culture and history without eulogizing. When ordering new history textbooks, the administration asked me to examine the chapters on Hitler, the persecution of the Jews, and the Holocaust. Our school system was one of the first to introduce Holocaust studies, taught by a former student of mine. As a chairperson of a department with 21 foreign language teachers, I could guide many young teachers and influence some of my colleagues from other departments.

When my daughter was expecting her second baby, a boy who has grown into a 6’4″ young man, who was confirmed in 1997, I opted for early retirement. My children had never known the loving presence of grandparents. I wanted to become a true “oma” who had time to baby-sit, bake cookies, go to the zoo and museum, and build a relationship and memories, like I had with my grandparents. When L.F. asks me to read his papers for school and E. calls from college and needs information on the Renaissance in Florence, I know we have established this bond. This closeness of generations has made my retirement years into the golden years. With deep sorrow they remind me of the golden years that were denied to my parents, along with millions of other Jewish families.