Читать книгу Never Forget Your Name - Alwin Meyer - Страница 13

Jürgen Loewenstein and Wolfgang Wermuth Right after Hitler came to power on 30 January 1933,¹ the Nazis ordered numerous restrictions on Jewish life in Germany. On 1 April 1933, the boycott of Jewish business, Jewish goods, Jewish doctors and Jewish lawyers began.² Uniformed Nazis stood guard in front of Jewish shops, department stores and businesses and barred people from entering, sometimes using violence. Jewish shops were daubed with slogans such as ‘Jew!’ or ‘Shopping here can be lethal’.³

As co-owner of an antiques business, Wolfgang’s father Siegmund Wermuth, a German soldier wounded in the First World War, was no longer able to work. He was a member of the Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten [Reich Association of Jewish Veterans] founded shortly after the end of the First World War. In 1925, it had between 35,000 and 40,000 members in 500 local groups. Its main aim was to combat antisemitism in Germany.⁴

It was quite normal for Jewish soldiers to serve in the German army before the Nazi era. Almost 100,000 Jews had served between 1914 and 1918, some had won medals and over 20,000 had gained promotion. Among them were 3,000 officers. And 12,000 Jewish soldiers had died on the battlefields of the First World War.⁵ Wolfgang’s father had also been ‘highly decorated’.

For Jürgen Loewenstein, everything changed radically in March 1933. He saw the parades of ‘brown columns’ for the first time. They marched through the streets with torches, shouting and singing. ‘As a youth, I was naturally curious and opened the window.’ Now he could clearly hear what they were singing: ‘The Jews are everywhere, they cross the Red Sea, the waves close on them, and the world has its peace.’ And then they roared: ‘When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, so much the better.’⁶ He was never able to forget these verses. His grandmother, Agathe Sochaczewer (née Rosenthal), also heard the singing. She pulled him away from the window before the song had finished and said: ‘Jürgen, look carefully at these people: they are your enemies. Never forget that.’

‘That’s when my childhood ended. I was not quite 8 years old.’

The Wermuth family had lots of contacts with non-Jews. Wolfgang’s mother Käthe, an accomplished pianist, was invited by the neighbours to play Christmas carols on the piano. ‘My mother enjoyed these festivities. It had nothing to do with her denying her own religion.’ Such invitations were quite common.

Käthe Wermuth was friends with the wife of a former officer. Their daughter was the same age as Ursula Brigitte, Wolfgang’s sister, who was seven years older than him. In 1935, Käthe received a letter from this woman which said more or less: ‘In my position, I can no longer remain in touch with you. I beg your forgiveness, but the way of the world today also has personal consequences. Please stay away from me in future.’

Wolfgang started school in 1933 at the state primary school on Sybelstrasse. When the family moved first to Bismarckstrasse 66 and then in 1935 to Fritschestrasse 55, both in Charlottenburg, he changed to the state primary school on Witzlebenstrasse. ‘There were seven Jewish children in my class out of twenty-eight pupils. Our class teacher was special. She did not favour us Jewish pupils but she felt a particular sympathy for us.’ The Jewish children had religious instruction twice a week. ‘We were exempt from the Christian class. And even at the state primary school there was a very good religion teacher, Miss Kaspari.’ The Christian fellow pupils were curious and asked questions about the Jewish religion. ‘I remember at Pesach – naturally I ate matzo, unleavened bread − and the children asked me what I was eating. I explained to them as well as I could its origins and the significance of this festival.’

There were very few Jews living in Fritschestrasse. Wolfgang made friends on the street with the neighbourhood children. ‘They came to our apartment. We celebrated birthdays together. I also went to their houses. That was quite normal.’

In 1935, Jürgen was fortunate enough to go on one of the trips to Horserød, Denmark, organized by the Berlin Jewish community. ‘For once I could eat as much as I wanted.’

A year later, he took part in a trip organized by the Reich Association of Jewish Veterans, again to Denmark, during the Olympic Games in Berlin (1 to 16 August 1936). ‘The Nazis toned things down. They wanted to show other countries how wonderful everything was in Germany. The Jewish benches and “no Jews” signs were removed.’

The attempt by Nazi Germany to cover up the antisemitism during the Summer Games from the many visitors, athletes and journalists in Berlin was only partially successful. Antisemitic signs were still to be found, even in the vicinity of the Olympic stadiums.⁷ In reality there was no interruption to the Nazi terror. Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established just outside Berlin almost at the same time as the Games, and the first fifty inmates were interned there on 12 July 1936. By the end of 1936, it already had 1,600 internees. The camp was to be a model for the large-scale expansion of the concentration camp system by the Nazi regime.⁸

Or, again, two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games, on 16 July 1936, around 600 Roma and Sinti, including many children, from the Reich capital were put in an internment camp in the Marzahn suburb of Berlin. Almost all of them were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.⁹

In 1938, Wolfgang’s fellow pupils and neighbourhood children began to call him names (‘Jude – Itzig – Lebertran [cod liver oil]’). ‘I was cut off. When, in my childish innocence, I would go up to these boys, who had been in my house, they turned away. I had no reason not to like them anymore.’

Wolfgang wanted to go to the grammar school. ‘There was no problem with admission.’ But shortly afterwards, his parents received a letter saying that for ‘race reasons’ their son would no longer be accepted at the grammar school. In November 1938, Jewish children were banned from attending state schools.¹⁰ Wolfgang was able to attend one of the twenty-four Jewish schools in Berlin,¹¹ at Klopstockstrasse 58 in the Hansaviertel. He later switched to the school in Joachimsthaler Strasse, the headquarters of the Jewish community after the Second World War in the divided Berlin.

A favourite meeting place after school was the Jüdisches Lehrhaus at Marburger Strasse 5 near Bahnhof Zoo. It had a library with books for young people that Wolfgang liked to go to. Apart from reading, the children played table tennis, draughts or chess. ‘There was also a Jewish lunch menu. The owners were called Kugel.’ On the night of the state-organized pogrom on 9–10 November 1938, during which Jewish citizens were arrested and murdered and almost all synagogues in Germany were laid waste and burned to the ground,¹² the windows of Pension Kugel were also broken, chairs thrown out onto the street and the library ransacked. At that time, the children in Fritschestrasse began to throw pieces of coal and stones at their former classmate Wolfgang Wermuth. ‘There was one family – the father was some kind of civil servant – with three sons. The youngest, Dieter Neugebauer, still visited me secretly, although his parents had strictly forbidden it. His mother didn’t go into a shop when my mother was in there. She waited outside until my mother left.’ The concierge in the house was quite forthright. He complained about the ‘Jews with their dirty feet’. Close neighbours could be heard making negative comments on the stairs. No one in the street wanted anything more to do with the Wermuths and the other Jews living there. No one wanted to know them or ever to have done so.

On 12 November 1938, Jews were banned from visiting theatres, cinemas, concerts and exhibitions.¹³ This exclusion from cultural life was a severe blow for the Wermuths. ‘My parents knew a lot of theatre and film people. They were friends with many of the regulars at the Romanisches Café [an artists’ meeting place at Kurfürstendamm 238, now Budapester Strasse 43]. My father even played skat with the film director Ernst Lubitsch when he lived in Berlin.’

In 1938, Siegmund Wermuth had to stop working altogether, and was forced to collect rubbish. He worked occasionally for Siemens as a vacuum cleaner salesman in the outer districts, but in November 1938 this also stopped. Since 1933, the Nazis had tightened the labour market for Jews. They were now classed with ‘asocials’, a concept with a long tradition in political propaganda. In late 1938, German and stateless Jews had to work in special areas isolated from the other employees. This applied at first to Jews who had been forced into unemployment and then, from mid-1940, to all Jews up to a certain age.¹⁴

Siegmund Wermuth found it ‘very decent’ to be given a large radio as a retrospective Christmas bonus from Siemens:

For a long time, my father thought he was safe. He was a decorated First World War veteran. The Jews had risked their lives and spilled their blood for this country. Didn’t that count for anything anymore? My father thought that they might strip the Jews of their citizenship and make them stateless, but he still didn’t feel directly affected by much of what was going on. It was as if the neighbour’s house was burning but my house wouldn’t necessarily catch fire as a result. That’s how a lot of people felt until they were up to their necks in water.

Wolfgang’s parents were simply unable to believe what was happening around them. They accepted a lot, thinking that it couldn’t go any further. They no longer recognized people they thought they knew. Their world collapsed around them. Literally everything slid out of control. But they still hoped that it would all pass.

In early December 1938, the Jews were banned from using certain streets and squares. The term ‘Judenbann’ [ban on Jews] was coined for that purpose.¹⁵ The lives of the Wermuth and Loewenstein families were almost completely confined to their own four walls.

Of course, Jewish families – including the Loewensteins and Wermuths − in Berlin and Germany considered emigrating. But the Loewensteins didn’t have enough money. Wolfgang Wermuth now had contact only with Jewish children. In his family as well, emigration became the main topic of conversation. ‘Should we go? If so, where to? What about visas?’ It all happened very quickly. ‘Suddenly there were only sixteen children left of the original thirty or so pupils.’ This made those left behind uncertain and worried. They envied the émigrés. ‘At home I was consoled by being told that emigration was highly uncertain and that perhaps it would get better.’ Some of the Wermuths’ relatives and their families had also fled abroad.

The Sochaczewer and Loewenstein families wanted at least to get Jürgen out of Nazi Germany. He was sent to a ‘hakhshara’, an agricultural school, in preparation for emigration to Palestine.¹⁶

On 1 September 1939, Jürgen was standing on the platform at the train station in Sommerfeld (Niederlausitz) waiting for a narrow-gauge train to take him to nearby Schniebinchen. He was carrying his meagre possessions in a cardboard box tied up with string.

‘Hey, kid, where are you going?’ a man asked him.

‘Schniebinchen.’

‘Aha, you want to go to Palestine. That’s where you should all go.’

Jürgen was happy to get out of Berlin. He wanted to ‘start something new, to begin working and carry on learning’. And ‘perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to get away from Germany’.

The emigration centre was on a hill not far from the village of Schniebinchen. There were around 150 children and adolescents aged 14 and over living in three houses. Half of the day was filled with agricultural training. In the other half, they spoke about Zionism, the labour movement, kibbutzim and Palestine studies, did theatre work and played music, read German literature and had to help in the kitchen. ‘Schniebinchen was isolated and we didn’t get much news from outside. Everyone was waiting and hoping to make Aliyah, immigration to Palestine.’

Jürgen enjoyed the work and he learned a lot about things he had never previously heard of: ‘Zionism, the labour movement, kibbutzim and equality, the history of the Jewish people and of Eretz Israel [the birthplace and refuge of the Jewish people]. But we also learned a bit about Hasidism (“The entire life of the Hasid down to the smallest detail is devoted to the service of God.”)¹⁷ and German literature.… In the evening, there were theatre and music courses.’¹⁸ But one day Jürgen received a cruel surprise. The director informed him: ‘There’s no place for you here. You’re not suited for community life.’ For Jürgen, this decision was completely incomprehensible. But tears and shouting were of no use.

In 1933, there were 160,000 Jews living in Berlin.¹⁹ By September 1939, forced emigration, flight and death, deportation and murder had reduced the number to just around 75,000.²⁰

The Jewish school in Joachimsthaler Strasse was forced to close. Wolfgang started at the Jewish secondary school at Wilsnacker Strasse 3 in 1940. He tried very hard and was eager to learn. The big question loomed permanently in the background: when would he be able to use what he had learned? ‘This question overshadowed everything.’

After Jürgen was unable to continue the agricultural training in Schniebinchen, he had a stroke of luck. At the time of his rejection, the hakhshara teacher Therese Hemmerdinger was visiting Schniebinchen from Rüdnitz and offered to accept the boy in her group.

A small group of Jewish girls and boys lived in Rüdnitz near Bernau. They were convinced that they would one day go to Eretz Israel. The work in the vegetable garden was not difficult and produced additional food. Friendships were formed and future plans hatched. We forgot what was going on in the world. The horrors of war were far away.

The first news of deportations to the East reached Rüdnitz. ‘Some fellow students whose parents were on the list didn’t know what to do: to go back to their families or to remain in the hakhshara. It was decided that we should all stay together.’

During this time, Wolfgang Wermuth was able to finish his schooling in Berlin at the Jewish secondary school in Wilsnacker Strasse in April 1941.

Then came the ‘big bang’ for him: he was recruited immediately with around 19,000 Jewish women and men from Berlin in the middle of the year for essential war production.²¹ It was claimed that, without the forced labour, the economy and the conduct of the war in Nazi Germany would have collapsed at the latest by early 1942.²²

Wolfgang was 14 years old. He was assigned to the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken in Berlin-Borsigwalde for an hourly wage of 27 pfennig. Work started at 6 a.m. ‘I rode the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse, changed trains and had then to walk for 20 to 25 minutes.’ They worked separately from the non-Jewish employees in ‘large, locked, cage-like things’. They had to wear a blue armband with a red dot on it and were only allowed to go to the toilet in groups of ten.

Wolfgang checked bullets for cracks. ‘We deliberately allowed lots of small defects to pass. We knew quite well who the ammunition was intended for. The inspection could not always be precisely traced, but we could not commit real acts of sabotage.’ But it was still risky to allow defects to pass. Anyone caught doing so was likely to be deported immediately. The Jewish forced labourers had occasional contact with the non-Jewish workers. There were a few young women who secretly gave them sandwiches wrapped in newspaper. ‘We had limited rations and ration cards.’

One day, Wolfgang got a splinter of metal in his eye. ‘My father applied for me to be taken off the factory work.’ He now worked in a small typewriter factory near the Landwehrkanal, ‘where the conditions were quite decent’. Wolfgang was on the late shift from 2 to 11 p.m. ‘There were more and more air raid warnings and actual air raids.’

The Jews were not allowed to eat in the factory canteen, which was reserved for ‘Germans’. There was thus very little contact. Wolfgang recalls a young woman in the pay department who was always nice to him. Once she gave him a bottle of lemonade she had hidden behind a brick. He secretly returned the empty deposit bottle to her. He travelled by S-Bahn to work and his ticket was only valid for that journey. ‘There would be problems if I took another route, and there were lots of controls.’

One night on the way home, Wolfgang was sitting opposite a woman. She saw the yellow star on his clothing. ‘She asked me if I really had to wear the star and if I was hungry. We didn’t get a lot to eat, but we weren’t hungry.’ The woman gave him a package to take with him. ‘I’m sure she didn’t have a lot herself.’ In the package was a cooked meatloaf. When he told his mother about it, she said: ‘You see, there are still decent people.’ Things like this would give her a little hope again.

In 1940/1, one hakhshara centre after another was closed down. For Jürgen Loewenstein, this was now a common occurrence. ‘We arrived at a new place, continued the work of those who were no longer there, and didn’t even ask where they had gone to.’ He went from Ellguth in Silesia (now Ligota Oleska, Poland), Eichow-Muhle in Spreewald, and Ahrensdorf near Luckenwalde to Paderborn.²³ From 9 January 1942, the 100-strong group lived in barracks at Grüner Weg 86.²⁴ They worked as forced labourers for the city. Jürgen was a road sweeper and rubbish collector.

Now and then, Jürgen and his colleagues were given food by the local inhabitants, including the owner of a bakery they passed every week: ‘The baker came out of his shop and pulled out a loaf of bread from under his apron and handed it to us saying: “For God’s sake don’t tell my wife.”’ The same thing happened the following week, ‘but this time it was the baker’s wife who came out of the shop, produced a loaf of bread from under her apron and said: “For God’s sake don’t tell my husband.”’

In spite of the hard physical work, the ‘cultural side of life was not forgotten’:

We naturally celebrated all the Jewish holidays and worked hard at learning Hebrew. We sat together in groups and listened to poems and music. Fritz Schäfer, one of our ‘madrichim’, gave talks, and there was lots of discussion … : ‘When we get to Eretz Israel, we should realize that the Arab fellahin have more in common with us than the middle-class Jews.’ Fanny Bergas, another ‘madricha’, gave a talk on what book we would take with us if we were alone on a desert island.

All roads to Palestine were now blocked. According to a decree of 23 October 1941, Jews were no longer allowed to emigrate.²⁵ Jürgen and his colleagues hoped at least to be able to stay in Germany.

In Berlin, Wolfgang’s sister Ursula Brigitte was recruited as a forced labourer at Batteriefabrik Pertrix in Niederschöneweide. Here, in one of the most important industrial districts of Berlin, Jewish forced labourers had been employed since 1938. They were to be joined later by prisoners of war, and forced labourers and concentration camp inmates from other countries. In autumn 1944, a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen was installed in Schöneweide, where up to 500 women whiled away their time. Since April 1944, the manufacture of aircraft batteries, vital for the war effort, had had absolute priority at Pertrix.²⁶

Ursula Brigitte Wermuth was arrested by the works security [Werkschutz] in July 1942, with four other women, for allegedly communicating with prisoners of war. Their ‘offence’: they had given them shaving brushes and toothpaste. The day after their arrest, a Wehrmacht lieutenant appeared at the door of the family’s apartment. He reproached Käthe Wermuth, saying ‘How could your daughter have anything to do with those gypsies?’

‘You know, these people in uniform have served their country just like you’, she replied. The lieutenant was taken aback at the lack of respect shown to him by a Jew. She was charged, but acquitted. In front of the courthouse, the Gestapo was waiting. ‘They arrested her on the spot but later released her again.’

‘After three or four days, we received an anonymous letter. It was three pages long and apparently came from a high-ranking member of the Gestapo, who had interrogated my sister. I can recall a few sentences from it. “We have questioned your daughter. I’m personally sorry, but that’s how the world is today. Perhaps a new dawn will come for you one day.” A few days later, the Wermuths received an official letter informing them that Ursula Brigitte was in the women’s prison in Lehrter Strasse, Moabit, and that visits were only possible by special permission. But Wolfgang’s mother simply went there with a package with linen and sandwiches. ‘At the prison gates, a guard told my mother that she had a nerve coming to the Gestapo without permission.’ By chance, Käthe saw her daughter waving from behind a barred window and was able to wave back to her. It was the last time she saw her.

After the war, Wolfgang Wermuth discovered that his sister had been deported initially to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück and then to Riga in Latvia, where she was shot in the forest of Rumbala in a mass execution.

The first transport of German Jews from Berlin-Grunewald train station reached Riga on 30 November 1941. The 1,000 or more Berlin Jews were all murdered in Rumbala.²⁷ On that Sunday, on 8 December, around 25,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto were also shot.²⁸

By the end of October 1942, a further seven transports with over 6,500 Jewish children, women and men left from Berlin alone. Practically none of them survived. For example, the 959 people on the transport of 19 October, including 140 children under 10 years of age, and the 55 children under the age of 10 on the transport of 26 October, were all murdered immediately in the forest near Riga.²⁹

At around this time, in Paderborn, the members of Jürgen Loewenstein’s group were able to write and receive letters. They were also allowed to receive packages from friends and relatives. The letters and cards sent by Jürgen Loewenstein from Paderborn to Ernst Gross, a family friend, at Chausseestrasse 125 in Berlin, have survived. After liberation, they met up again, and Jürgen was given his letters back. On 23 December 1942, he wrote the following:

I’m sure you know that my parents are gone. They were taken on the 3rd of this month. I’ve had no news since. I didn’t even receive a letter, just a notification from people I don’t know. Now I sit here and realize that I’m all alone, that I have no more relatives, that it’s Christmas tomorrow, and Chanukah has already passed, and there was no letter, no package with gifts, as was usually the case, and that I was alone and abandoned. But that doesn’t help. Head up, don’t think, just hope, hope, hope.

Here there’s no change. The work is difficult (I’m now on rubbish collection) and the food is mediocre. You probably know that we don’t get any meat, eggs or cake rations. But we have to make do. Sometimes we are really hungry.…

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I wish you all the best. I hope you all keep well.… Up to now I always spent Christmas at home and, I think, at your house. But that’s all finished now.

Jürgen’s parents were deported to Auschwitz on the 24th transport east from Berlin on 9 December 1942.³⁰ The 1,060 children, women and men arrived the following day, of whom 137 men and twenty-five women were allowed to live. Jürgen’s parents, Paula and Walter Loewenstein, and a further 896 children, women and men were murdered in the gas chambers.³¹ Jürgen wrote to Ernst Gross in Berlin on 7 February 1943:

There are 100 of us in all.… In my room there are six boys of my age and with the same goal. They’re all great guys and we get on very well together. If one gets a package or something from the city, it’s shared with everyone.…

One friend has his birthday on 20 February. Could you not put a small package together? A little present and a nice letter. I’m sure it would give him great pleasure.… He’s completely alone, without parents. Is it too much to ask because it’s not me? … His name is Alfred Ohnhaus.

On 23 February, Jürgen wrote: ‘Onny’s birthday was really nice and pleasant. For a couple of hours we were able to forget everything.’ The boys on Grüner Weg in Paderborn still hoped to survive the war. Many of them thought: ‘We’re indispensable and will hopefully remain so. Life goes on. We’re young and we’ll stick together.’

Lydia Holznerová ‘I know the Germans. They are a cultivated people. They won’t behave so badly.’ Lydia’s father, Emil Holzner, repeated this constantly to his friend, the headmaster of the school in Hronov, a small town in eastern Bohemia, before the Germans invaded. When the invasion of the Wehrmacht in the Czech Sudetenland appeared imminent in 1938, he advised the textile wholesaler: ‘Go away! Don’t stay here!’ But Emil Holzner, his wife Růžena, and his daughters Věra, aged 16, and Lydia, aged 9, stayed.

Lydia started school in 1936. As there were only sixty-five Jews in Hronov, there was no Jewish school.³² ‘I went to the primary school like all the children in the town.’ She was the only Jewish girl in her class, but it made no difference. ‘The relationship between Christians and Jews was unproblematic.’

Lydia encountered Nazis for the first time in 1937. Her family was vacationing in a spa resort, and one day young Nazi Party supporters marched through the towns with pipes and drums. ‘We can do without that! We’re going home’, said her father. ‘Why?’ asked the 7-year-old. ‘It was then that my parents explained to me that there could be some changes in our lives.’ Emil and Růžena talked more and more about emigrating. ‘I was spared these discussions. I was always sent out of the room.’ Lydia recalls that her parents wanted to send Věra away. But her sister didn’t want to go away. She said: ‘This is my home. This is my country and this is where I’ll stay.’

As the occupation of Czech Sudetenland by German troops became imminent in autumn 1938, 200,000 people left between then and summer 1939, including around 25,000 Jewish inhabitants, many of whom sought shelter and a life in the still independent Czechoslovakian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.³³ Flight was the only way of avoiding being deported to a camp. The Holzners remained in Hronov, although the town was close to the German border.

Channa Markowicz Channa’s father always showed a marked interest in politics. The developments in Europe in the 1930s, particularly in Germany, worried him. ‘It must have been 1938; he wanted us to emigrate to Russia or America.’ He saw no future for himself or his family in Irshava, but his wife didn’t want to leave. ‘I’m not going anywhere as long as my mother lives here’, she said.

Dáša Friedová Although the Fried family were the only Jews in the Czech village of Odolice, where there were also a lot of Germans as well as Czechs, Dáša Friedová and her sister Sylva had no idea of the impending dangers to their lives. ‘My parents never spoke about Hitler or Nazi Germany in our presence. Perhaps they wanted to protect us.’ Besides, in their children’s presence, Otto and Kát’a Fried spoke French or German when they wanted to talk about serious matters. ‘We didn’t understand, because we children spoke only Czech.’

When, in autumn 1938, the occupation by German troops of the northern, western and southern regions of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland),³⁴ including Odolice, was imminent, the Fried family fled to Prague. They had to leave almost all of their things behind. It was only then that Dáša began to sense that ‘something bad is happening’.

Relatives of the Frieds wanted to leave Europe altogether. An aunt and five cousins fled to Canada. They begged the Frieds to follow them. Dáša’s mother obtained a passport. ‘But my father didn’t want to go anywhere.’ He said: ‘We’re Czech, we were born here and this is our land. The Germans won’t be here for long. We’re staying here.’ In Prague, the family moved into a nice large apartment and new furniture was acquired. Dáša and Sylva went to school again. The girls played with the children of other relatives, most of whom still lived in Prague. Life returned to normal.

‘My sister and I began to feel at home in our new surroundings. We no longer felt any antisemitism. And life began to be pleasant again.’ Until 13 March 1939, when German troops invaded Prague. Dáša was 9 years old; her sister Sylva, 12.

Sudetenland was annexed by Nazi Germany in autumn 1938.³⁵ And on 15 March the following year, just one day after Slovakia declared its independence, the Wehrmacht occupied the rest of the country. The German terror began right after the arrival of the Wehrmacht, SS units and police. Jews, Roma and political opponents were persecuted, interned and murdered.³⁶ Dáša’s father was also arrested immediately and imprisoned in Pankraz. While the family still lived in Odolice, at the time of the Czechoslovakian elections on 19 May 1935,³⁷ Otto Fried had offered to drive inhabitants to the polling station with the farm’s vehicles. Among them were many Germans. Because Fried feared that they would vote for the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party, which later merged with the Nazi Party, the vehicles never reached their destination: ‘My father told the drivers to go somewhere else. That’s why he was arrested immediately after the Germans entered Prague.’ Suddenly, Dáša and Sylva became worried again. Fortunately, their father was released after a few months. ‘I have never discovered what happened to him in prison.’

The girls became hopeful again. They continued to go to school and played with their relatives’ children. Friends also visited them in their nice apartment. ‘My mother loved to have people around her and to organize celebrations.’

Janek Mandelbaum In the Free City of Danzig/Gdańsk, around 35 kilometres from the Polish city of Gdynia, the Nazis won over 50 per cent of the vote in the May 1933 elections. In spite of the League of Nations mandate, Jews were increasingly discriminated against and expropriated. A modified version of the Nuremberg Race Laws entered into force there on 21 November 1938.³⁸ This provoked great worry and concern for Janek’s parents, Majloch and Cyrla Mandelbaum. They wondered fearfully what that would mean for their future and whether they would be safe in Gdynia.

In autumn 1936, the following report on the situation of the Jews of Danzig appeared in the Jüdische Revue published in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia:

The situation of the Jews … is determined by the fact that although a democratic constitution prevents Jews from being legally discriminated against and from becoming second-class citizens, the population is being urged through strong Nazi propaganda to boycott Jews economically.… As the dominant government party, the Nazis will do everything to pursue anti-Jewish legislation as in the German Reich.… A ban on kosher butchering was recently ordered as part of the Emergency Regulation Law. Other regulations are likely to follow.³⁹

Majloch and Cyrla Mandelbaum often received visits from friends. ‘They talked about politics nearly all the time. They had an idea about what was going on in the Nazi Reich.’ They knew about the marginalization and repression of the Jews in Germany and wondered why Hitler and his followers hated the Jews so much. Janek’s parents didn’t talk about their concerns when the children were present. ‘They wanted to protect us.’ But Janek often listened at the living-room door – or wherever he could – and learned a lot in that way.

In the meantime, Majloch Mandelbaum made successful efforts to arrange for the family’s emigration to Australia. But there was a problem: ‘The regulations specified that the husband must live for six months in the country before he could fetch his family.’ Janek’s mother did not want to be separated for six months from her husband at times like these.

‘So we didn’t go. Everything would certainly have been different for the family if we had emigrated to Australia.’ But no one, including Janek’s mother, knew at the time what awaited the family.

The summer of 1939 had begun and Janek had just celebrated his twelfth birthday. His parents wanted him to have his barmitzvah a year later, making him a fully fledged member of the Jewish community. This celebration usually takes place on the first Shabbat after the thirteenth birthday. On this day, the barmitzvah boy has to read a portion from the Torah in Hebrew. On the following day, the barmitzvah is celebrated with family and friends.

‘My father engaged a teacher to prepare me. He was meant to teach me Hebrew to study the Torah and whatever else I needed for my barmitzvah. After one or two months of lessons, the teacher disappeared and never returned. Perhaps he had fled from the impending war. The German border was just a stone’s throw away.’

One day it was announced: ‘Schools will not open as planned after the summer holidays.’ Janek and his friends were delighted: ‘Great! Longer holidays! What could be better?’

Janek’s father had a premonition, suspecting that Gdynia would be one of the first military objectives of Nazi Germany. He wanted to be sure that nothing would happen to his wife and children. ‘It was decided that we should go to my grandfather. My father believed that we would be safe with his father. He said he would follow us in a month.’ So, one morning in August, he brought his wife Cyrla and his children Ita, Jakob and Janek to the train station. It was crowded with people: ‘Many were fleeing to the interior of the country.’ The Mandelbaums embarked on what was a long journey at the time, around 550 kilometres. They were to travel for more than twelve hours.

Janek’s grandfather lived in Działoszyce in southern Poland, 55 kilometres from Kraków. ‘It was a very Jewish town’, as reflected by the population: in 1899, 4,673 of the 5,170 inhabitants were Jews; in 1910, 6,446 out of 7,688; and in the mid-1930s, over 5,000 out of 6,700.⁴⁰ The Jewish community had a large synagogue seating 800 worshippers, a prayer house, a Talmud Torah school with 80 pupils, and a 15,000-square-metre cemetery. There was also a Jewish library with 3,000 books.⁴¹

Janek’s grandfather was waiting for the family at the train station. He was a pious orthodox Jew in a ‘black caftan with a long beard and Hasidic headwear’. He was surprised, ‘if not shocked’, at Janek’s appearance: ‘I was wearing short trousers held up by narrow braces.’ He looked darkly at the boy and said to his mother: ‘I don’t ever again want to see my grandson leave the house without a hat.’

As they made their way back to his grandfather’s house, Janek stood out: ‘The town was full of Jews dressed in black. They all spoke Yiddish. There were lots of small shops with Jewish owners.’ Some were also to be found on the market square near his grandfather’s two-storey house. The boy felt at home in the large house, where the grandfather worked as a sign writer. To please him, Janek wore a kippa thereafter. He also went with his grandfather ‘for the first time before going to the synagogue’ to a mikvah – a bathhouse serving not for hygienic purposes but for cleansing ritual impurity.

Two weeks after the Mandelbaums arrived in Działoszyce, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Seven days later, on 7 September 1939, the Wehrmacht occupied the town.

We heard the tanks rolling from far off. The streets were empty. The Germans also came past my grandfather’s house. We hid behind the curtains. He finally mustered the courage to look out on the balcony. The Germans had not only tanks but also motorcycles with sidecars and trucks full of soldiers.

We heard that people from the town had been arrested. Our fear grew with every day of the occupation.

Janek hoped against hope that his father would finally arrive. But he didn’t come. Instead, the family received a card one day saying that his father had been sent to Stutthof concentration camp. He had been allowed to send a message: ‘I’m in Stutthof. Don’t worry. I’m fine.’

Janek Mandelbaum discovered fifty years later that his father had been arrested on 14 September at the age of 36 and transported to Stutthof, 18 kilometres from Gdynia, the family’s hometown.

The Nazis had already compiled lists of ‘undesirable Poles’ before the war. The deportation and murder of the Polish population, especially the Jews, was part of the plan to completely ‘Germanize’ Poland, including Gdynia and Danzig/Gdańsk. Polish leaders, including members of political parties and unions, were among the first victims. Jews who had not been shot when the Germans first invaded were arrested with non-Jews and interned in Stutthof. There, and in the thirty-nine satellite camps, the Wehrmacht interned around 110,000 people from twenty-eight countries, 63,000 to 65,000 of whom died.⁴²

Mindla Czamócha, the youngest sister of Janek’s father in Słomniki, lived a good 30 kilometres from Działoszyce. She had given birth to a daughter eighteen months previously, on 15 February 1938, and asked Cyrla Mandelbaum if Janek’s 15-year-old sister Ita could move in to help a little after the birth. She and her husband owned a grain mill and promised ‘Ita will never go hungry with us.’ Janek’s sister and mother agreed.

Around three months after they arrived in southern Poland, Cyrla Mandelbaum decided to move with Jakob and Janek to her older brother. He lived in a small town called Sławków, 80 kilometres from Działoszyce. Because her husband was interned in Stutthof and couldn’t join them, she ‘preferred to live with her own family’.

There were around 960 Jews living in Sławków. The town had been occupied by German troops at the beginning of September. A few days later, 98 men were shot by German soldiers. They were all from Sławków and the surrounding area and had attempted to escape. The synagogue was also desecrated and the German occupiers demanded a high ransom from the Jewish inhabitants. They took hostages to press their claim. And – as everywhere in occupied Europe – a Jewish council was set up in the town, which, among other things, had to recruit Jews for forced labour.⁴³

When the Germans occupied Sławków, they immediately forced the people to work on the roads. In winter 1939/1940 they had to shovel snow. The snow was lying higher than me. The Jewish council was commanded every day to provide 200 or 300 people. I was not on the list because I was only 12. But I replaced people who still had some money and paid me to work for them.

Janek thought up this idea himself because his uncle was ‘quite poor and had five children of his own’. They all needed to be fed ‘in those difficult times’, which was ‘not easy’. A package, ‘probably with valuable contents’, that his father had managed to send shortly before his arrest also never arrived – ‘And so I wanted to contribute to the living expenses.’ And it worked ‘quite well and I learned what hard labour means’. For a time he was assigned to an electrician as his assistant. From January 1940 to June 1942, he was conscripted for forced labour.

At the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942, the Jews of Sławków were concentrated into a ghetto. It had no fence or wall, but they weren’t allowed to leave it. There was a strict curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and all the Jews had to remain in their homes.⁴⁴

Janek was very worried about his mother. She tried to be strong so as to be able to look after him and his brother. ‘But she was extremely worried – particularly about my father and my sister.’ They weren’t allowed to visit Ita. The place where she lived with her father’s youngest sister was now part of the General Government⁴⁵ − the part of Poland occupied by Nazi Germany but not incorporated immediately into the Reich. The situation in Sławków, where his mother lived, was different: the town now belonged to Germany. It was impossible for her to get to the other sector. ‘This situation was intolerable for my mother. She was sick with worry.’ But Janek was also losing his joy and hunger for life. ‘I just wanted it to be over.’ He wanted to get back to his old life in Gdynia with his mother, his sister and his brother. ‘With papa to meet us there.’

Heinz Salvator Kounio In Thessaloniki, the parents of Heinz, Salvator and Helene Kounio (called Hella), were increasingly anxious at the news broadcast several times a day by the BBC. The family followed the fate of the Jews in Germany in particular, with great concern. ‘My sister Erika and I realized that something worrying was going on. But we didn’t know exactly what was happening.’ Erika was 12 years old and Heinz 11.

Their grandmother came from Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in Czechoslovakia. When German troops invaded in autumn 1938, practically all of the Jews living there, as elsewhere, fled. Over 15,000 Jewish children, women and men from the border areas left their homes, as did 13,000 non-Jewish German Nazis and 155,000 to 160,000 non-Jewish Czechs.⁴⁶

Ernst and Theresa Löwy, the grandparents of Heinz and Erika, were among them. ‘My grandparents arrived in Thessaloniki as refugees. With two small suitcases. They were only able to take a few things with them. Just what they had on, plus a few clothes. They had to leave all their belongings behind. Now I began to understand that there was something terrible going on.’

The family, particularly Salvator Kounio, continued to maintain a few contacts with Germany, especially the Leitz company. ‘My father imported and sold the famous Leica cameras.’

Ferenc and Otto Klein Their parents in Hajdúböszörmény in Hungary also listened to the BBC every day. Sometimes their father listened to a Russian radio station broadcasting in Hungarian. ‘The talk was all about war. We children often listened to the programmes as well. And we also understood very well what was going on.’

In 1938 or 1939, five of the twins’ cousins had escaped to North America. ‘My parents didn’t want to leave.’ They were convinced that what was happening to the Jews elsewhere couldn’t happen to the Hungarian Jews. The twins were 6 years old; their sister Ágnes, 8. The persecution and discrimination against the Jews had already started in Hungary. In May 1938, the Hungarian government adopted the first anti-Jewish laws from Nazi Germany. The proportion of Jews in business and the professions was limited to 20 per cent. The Jews were increasingly excluded from public life in Hungary.

The anti-Jewish climate was stirred up in particular by the press, which was predominantly financed by the Germans. The ‘solution of the Jewish problem’, as it was cynically known, was on the agenda of various pro-Nazi parties and Christian churches. And the Hungarian army was extremely antisemitic.⁴⁷ ‘My father was forced to reduce his business activities. Jews were not allowed to sell heating fuel. He was able to continue trading in building timber and roof tiles. We were still relatively comfortable.’ Many Jews who had fled to Hungary from Slovakia lived in the town. It was forbidden to help them. That didn’t bother Otto’s mother: ‘She refused to be intimidated and helped all refugee Jews with food, clothing and everything they needed.’

Otto and Ferenc could sense that their parents were becoming more and more worried as time went by. The wanted these uncertain times to end and asked themselves: ‘When will the war be over?’ ‘When will the Germans lose the war?’ It was fairly clear to them that that would be their only salvation.

‘Unfortunately, the Hungarian Jews were far too trusting of the Hungarian government and other nations. But what happened was still unimaginable for most people.’

Yehuda Bacon Even before the Germans invaded Czech Sudetenland in October 1938, the 8-year-old Yehuda Bacon was already aware that there were changes taking place in Europe. He recalls that, after Austria’s annexation to the Reich in March 1938,⁴⁸ Jews from there fled to Poland via his hometown of Ostrava. One of them came to his father’s leather factory asking for alms. He told of the ‘brutality of the German and Austrian Nazis’ and wanted to ‘open the eyes of the world’ with his descriptions.

At the end of 1938, the Bacon family obtained the addresses from the Jewish community of people who had fled to Poland to whom packages could be sent. The wife of the rabbi to whom the Bacons sent food wrote back and said that the package was like a ‘straw in the ocean to which she clutched to prevent herself from sinking’. And an acquaintance informed them from Poland: ‘Our wardrobe consists of a nail on which I can hang all of my possessions.’

‘That’s the situation in Poland’, thought the family, ‘but it couldn’t happen here. That was the feeling at the time.’

The extent to which we were mentally unprepared is demonstrated by the fact that when the German troops occupied the town, we children stood at the side of the road as the tanks rolled in, trying to touch them because we had heard at home that they were made of cardboard. In addition, the jubilation – as it appeared to us – and the sea of swastikas made a deep impression, and we were keen to obtain franked envelopes from the post office with the inscription: ‘The city of black diamonds [the city had large coal reserves] thanks the Führer – Day of Liberation!’⁴⁹

The consequences were also felt in Ostrava: the rights of the Jewish inhabitants were gradually reduced and ultimately removed entirely.

Yehuda Bacon’s family were very scared of raids. ‘The houses of Jews were searched, and every pretext was used to enter and check an apartment.’ When the Bacons were eating fruit once, a few drops splashed onto the floor. They were wiped up immediately ‘because we Jews weren’t allowed to buy fruit’. ‘Aryan’ friends had obtained it for them.

One day the Gestapo searched the Bacons’ apartment. They found a slab of butter ‘which a Polish engine driver had brought us’. He had forgotten his coat. Yehuda’s mother had the presence of mind to put it around her shoulders so it wouldn’t be noticed. Yehuda’s father was summoned to appear, because of the butter. He went to the Jewish community to ask for support, and it intervened with the Gestapo. After a while, Isidor Bacon was able to return home. He had been interrogated by two Gestapo men. But when he was alone with one of them, he was told: ‘Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you.’

In early 1939, the Jewish inhabitants were registered for forced labour. In the middle of the year, two synagogues were set on fire by the Nazis.⁵⁰ Then, in October, 1,192 Jews were transported from Ostrava to Nisko in Poland, where they were supposed to build a camp. The project was abandoned in April 1940 and several hundred Jewish men were returned to Ostrava.⁵¹ A few years later, Majdanek concentration camp was established in Lublin, 100 kilometres north of Nisko.

Dagmar Fantlová The 8-year-old Dagmar also first learned that ‘something was going on in Germany’ around 1937. ‘A man, probably a rabbi, turned up in Kutná Hora. He was from Germany, I don’t remember which part. He had published a book. I can only recall the cover. It showed a man with a sign behind a gate on which was written: “Jude verrecke im eigenen Drecke” [May the Jews croak in their own filth].’

Dagmar heard people saying that some people were sending their children to England. This was barely discussed in her family. She and Rita were still too small. They had an aunt who wanted to emigrate with her husband, but somehow never managed to do so.

Later, there was a young man from the border region, from Cheb [Eger in German]. His parents had emigrated and he was meant to follow them later, but he didn’t manage to do so. He arrived on his own in Kutná Hora. My parents invited him for lunch every Sunday. He would always say that he wouldn’t go to the Theresienstadt camp and ghetto. But that’s where he ended up. My father said to him in Theresienstadt: ‘You see, you’re here after all.’ He replied: ‘There’s still a way out.’ But he never came back.

In early 1939, the rabbi from Germany disappeared from Kutná Hora as suddenly as he had arrived. It marked the start of a new series of events. On 15 March 1939, German troops entered Kutná Hora. ‘My father came to my bed early in the morning. He woke me and said: “We’ve lost the republic.” He was crying. This was something quite out of the ordinary for me. I’d never seen my father cry before.’ Dagmar got up and went to school. Nothing had changed there. ‘Only the weather was bad that day.’

When she came home at lunchtime, her father spoke about a visit to a patient. ‘He was driving on the left-hand side of the road. That’s how it was in those days. A German column was coming in the other direction, driving on the right. They stopped him and told him he should drive on the right.’ Julius Fantl came home in ‘deep shock’.

One day – it must have been a holiday – the Sudeten German lodger Zotter said to Julius Fantl: ‘I’d like to hang out the swastika flag.’ Dagmar’s father replied: ‘Herr Zotter, I’m sure you know that swastikas are not allowed to be flown in Jewish houses.’

‘I’d just hang it between the windows.’ And that’s what he did. Some time later, Zotter became the trustee of the shoe factory where he worked. This meant that all of the previous owners’ rights were extinguished and transferred to the trustee.⁵² Now he wanted to live in the house of the Jewish owner, which also contained the Jewish community offices. Zotter ordered the Jewish community to move to Julius Fantl’s house.

One of the Jewish families in Kutná Hora had to move out of their home. ‘They came to us, in the grandparents’ rooms. They moved into our apartment.’ On 23 October 1939, the order was given to dismiss all Jewish employees. And on 26 January 1940, Jews were forbidden from managing textile, shoe and leatherwear businesses. This and other measures, such as the obligation to register the company (7 February) and the employer’s private assets (16 March), were important steps towards ‘Aryanization’, as it was called. What followed was the expropriation of the Jews on a grand scale.⁵³

Eduard Kornfeld When he was 6 or 7 years old, Eduard first experienced ‘something like antisemitism’ as he was on his way to school. Children called him a ‘Saujude’ [‘Jewish pig’]. And on the walls would be scrawled ‘Zydy do Palestuny’ [‘Jews to Palestine’].

‘At first I didn’t understand what it all meant. What had the Jews or I done to deserve that? I didn’t even know what Palestine was.’ He thought about it a lot, and throughout his life it always hurt him deeply inside.

On 14 March 1939, the day before the German Wehrmacht invaded Bohemia and Moravia, the declaration of independence by the vassal Slovakia, the first puppet state of Nazi Germany, was announced. Prior to this, leading Slovak politicians had promised the German Reich that they would settle the ‘Jewish question’ on the German model. An authoritarian antisemitic one-party government, Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (named after a Slovak nationalist and anti-Jewish priest and politician), came to power. A month later, on 18 April 1939, the first antisemitic regulations were promulgated by the Slovak government. The number of Jews in the professions was drastically reduced. From then on, Jewish lawyers could only represent Jews, Jews were not allowed to have a concession for a public pharmacy, Jewish journalists could only work in Jewish newspapers, and the number of doctors with practices was limited to 4 per cent of the members of the Medical Council.⁵⁴

It became more and more dangerous for the Kornfeld family to go out onto the street. Harassment and organized attacks on the Jews of Bratislava increased.

The Hitler Youth, the Hlinka Guard and the voluntary Schutzstaffel [paramilitary units formed by the German minority in Slovakia] beat up us Jews more and more frequently, quite brutally. For example, there was a poor Sudeten German family, whom my father had always helped. They had several children, and my father often gave them bread. Later, one of these sons joined the German SS, and one day he came and beat up my father. That was how he showed his thanks for our help. It was a terrible experience.

In 1940, there were around 18,000 Jews in Bratislava, one-fifth or one-sixth of the total number of Jews in Slovakia. There were several synagogues, eleven batei midrash (Talmud colleges), two Jewish cemeteries, a hospital, an old people’s home, an orphanage, a large community hall and library, several banks, chemists, insurance companies, fifty Jewish doctors, sixty-five lawyers and thirty engineers.⁵⁵

Between 1938 and 1942, the situation of the Jewish inhabitants of Slovakia became intolerable. ‘The political climate was threatening. Our synagogues were destroyed, Torah scrolls torn and thrown onto the street. And we Jews were increasingly attacked and beaten bloody.’

The systematic anti-Jewish legislation by the Slovak state meant that only small amounts could be withdrawn from Jewish bank accounts. Or that ‘we Jews were basically banned from visiting restaurants, theatres or cinemas, or from entering public swimming pools or parks’. Jews were also banned from living in certain areas and in streets named after Hitler and Hlinka. This applied to 10,931 Jewish homes in fifty-two larger towns, where 43,124 Jewish children, women and men had lived before being forced to move.

The Kornfelds were also obliged to move. ‘We moved three times, I think. Once to near the Jewish school. That was still a good area. From there we moved to the Jewish ghetto’, where they remained ‘until the end’. Eduard’s father had first had to give up his linen goods shop ‘because Jews were no longer allowed to reside in that area’. In order to feed the family, he bought a bakery near the ghetto.

‘One day he had to give up this business as well.’ Jews were to be fully excluded from the Slovak economy. Within a short time, over 9,000 Jewish businesses – like Simon Kornfeld’s – were liquidated and over 1,800 ‘Aryanized’, in other words transferred to non-Jewish owners.⁵⁶

Following the introduction of the Jewish Codex in autumn 1941, marriages between Jews, or ‘Mischlinge’, and non-Jews became a punishable offence. Extramarital sexual intercourse between them was deemed to be ‘race defilement’. From 22 September 1941, the date of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year – ‘certainly no coincidence’ − all Jews over the age of 6 had to wear a ‘Jewish star’.

Finally, by 1 March 1942, 6,720 Jews were banished from Bratislava to the provinces. Those destined for ‘dislokácia’ were barely allowed to take anything with them. Their property was seized and sold and the proceeds used to cover the costs of the deportation.⁵⁷ The Kornfelds were able to remain in the city but lived ‘in permanent and all-consuming fear’. ‘We didn’t know in the evening what would happen to us the following morning, and in the morning whether we would still be in the city in the evening.’

Robert Büchler was 8 years old, his sister Ruth 6, when the satellite state Slovakia was created ‘by the grace of Germany’ following the declaration of independence on 14 March 1939. Now Topol’čany was also ruled by the chauvinist and antisemitic Hlinka party.

‘We weren’t very afraid. It was a time of deliberation. There were no major antisemitic demonstrations in our town. It was relatively quiet, albeit unsettling.’

In autumn 1939, Minister of the Interior Alexander Mach and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ferdinand Ďurčanský, two leaders of the Nazi government of Slovakia, visited Topol’čany. They addressed a large crowd from the town hall balcony. During the event, they pointed to the Jewish businesses on the market square and predicted: ‘The day is not far off when all this will be in Slovak hands.’⁵⁸ This was despite the fact that the Jewish families were also Slovak citizens.

In September 1940, Robert, who attended the Jewish primary school, was not allowed to go to the state grammar school. In a decision of 13 June 1939, the Slovak government had effectively banned Jewish pupils from attending state schools.⁵⁹ The Jewish children were only allowed to attend Jewish primary schools or classes. The Jewish community of Topol’čany decided to enlarge the Jewish primary school to eight classes. But the school building was seized in 1942. Classes stopped but were later resumed, for the few remaining Jewish children spared from the Nazi actions, in the Jewish old people’s home. In 1944, the school closed for good.⁶⁰

The company where Robert’s father worked was ‘Aryanized’ and taken over by the state. It was transformed into a monopoly called Slovpol. Josef Büchler lost his position as Prokurist (authorized signatory) but was allowed to remain in the company. ‘My father was important for the Slovak economy.’

The family lived outside the town in a rented two-family house. The other family were Christians – the husband, head of the local council.

‘We were always close to this family. My parents organized a New Year’s Eve party and they were naturally invited. And at Christmas there was always a present for my sister and me under the Christmas tree.’ Robert was good friends with the family’s daughter, who was his age. They were together every day, went fishing and even went on holiday together. ‘That might have been an exception, but it nevertheless existed as well.’

In 1940, the Büchlers were evicted from the house. ‘A Slovak simply threw us out. He wanted to live there. It was as simple as that.’ The Büchlers were lucky and found a ‘fine apartment’ in a working-class district.

Gábor Hirsch Persecution of the Jews was in full flow throughout Europe. ‘Our teachers’, says Gábor Hirsch from Békéscsaba in south-eastern Hungary, ‘made antisemitic comments. We Jewish pupils were not allowed to participate in the “levente” paramilitary training. Instead, we were given spades and hoes in preparation for the forced labour. But it was still tolerable.’

He first suspected that ‘there was something threatening in the air’ in March 1938. The 9-year-old heard about the entrance into Austria by German troops, the annexation to the German Reich, and the mass emigration of Austrian Jews. ‘Hildegard, my non-Jewish nanny, was no longer allowed to work for Jews. She had to return to Austria.’

Two months later, at the end of May 1938, Hungary promulgated the first anti-Jewish laws on the German model.⁶¹

In the summer holidays, Gábor went practically every day to the lake to swim. A stream flowed through Békéscsaba and fed the pool. The family maid brought the boy his lunch in a multi-level container. ‘I ate my lunch there.’ He was even in the Békéscsaba swimming club, ‘as long as I was allowed as a Jew’.

One summer – ‘it must have been the early 1940s’ – the locals had to share the pool with some members of the Hitler Youth from Germany. ‘They spent their holidays in our region.’ Prior to that, the Hungarian National Socialist Arrow Cross party, founded in 1937, had made a petition to the town. They demanded that Jews be banned from using the lake and steam bath. In 1941, it was rejected by the town of Békéscsaba, which claimed that there was no legal basis for the prohibition.⁶²

Meanwhile, discrimination against the Hungarian Jews continued. In August 1941, the third antisemitic Jewish law entered into force, banning marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Extramarital intimate relationships between Jews and non-Jews with Hungarian nationality were penalized as ‘race defilement’.⁶³

‘Yes, we lived with anti-Jewish laws.’ But the Hirsch family were barely aware of their precarious situation. There were many Jewish refugees in Békéscsaba from Slovakia and Poland. They were invited for lunch on Shabbat by members of the Jewish community, including the Hirsch family. ‘The refugees told of the violence against Jews in their countries. They related terrible stories.’

Gábor’s father was optimistic. As late as 1942, he planned and built a new house on a nearby street. One corner remained incomplete. János Hirsch feared that he might not be able to keep his shop on the high street because he was a Jew. If that was the case, he wanted to turn the corner of the building into a shop, which could be done quite quickly, and to transfer his business there.

Jiří and Zdeněk Steiner ‘On the day the Germans entered Prague, we were at home with my mother’, says Jiří Steiner. ‘German cars with yellow number plates were driving past.’ They looked out onto the street, hidden behind the curtains, ‘so that no one could see us’. ‘Mama began to cry again and we were very afraid.’ Then the lives of the Jewish inhabitants – as in all of the countries annexed by Germany – became more and more restricted and increasingly intolerable. Jiří and Zdeněk were not allowed to attend school. ‘If we had gold or silver, we had to hand it in.’

The looting by the Nazis knew no limits. In the six years of occupation, the National Bank of Bohemia and Moravia alone sent nearly 43 tonnes of pure gold currency to Nazi Germany.⁶⁴

It is estimated that there were around 55,000 Jews living in Prague in 1939.⁶⁵ A report for the period from 15 March 1939 to 1 October 1941, presented by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration set up by the Nazis in Prague, stated:

Since the incorporation of the territory of Bohemia and Moravia into Greater Germany, the Jews have been completely excluded from public, economic and social life.… The Jews, who have become unemployed and without means, are increasingly used for labour, particularly in construction, civil and railway engineering, regulatory work and all kinds of unskilled labour on building sites and in factories, and in agriculture and forestry.… Their bank accounts have been frozen and they are only allowed to withdraw a certain amount each month (RM 150.00 per person).⁶⁶

Pavel Steiner’s business was also liquidated. He was given a job in the Jewish community but earned nothing. The family lived from savings and what Jana Steiner, their mother, earned by selling home-made textile flowers.

One of the most incisive measures was the police regulation of 14 September 1941 stating that henceforth Jewish children, women and men had to wear a ‘Jewish star’. Many other prohibitions rapidly followed: Jews were no longer allowed to enter libraries, swimming pools, cinemas, parks, certain squares and streets, sporting events, theatre and entertainment locales. They were allowed to shop only during strictly controlled hours. There was a general curfew after 8 p.m. They were only permitted to enter certain hospital departments, post offices and tram carriages. The use of boats, rental cars, sleeping and dining cars and even radios was completely forbidden. Jews were also excluded from all clubs and associations.⁶⁷

There were notices everywhere saying ‘No Jews allowed’. After August 1940, Jewish children were not allowed to attend state schools.⁶⁸ Six to eight children now met in the Steiners’ home and were taught by an unemployed teacher. Some time later, they were able for a short time to attend a semi-official Jewish school.

In 1941, the family were evicted from their apartment, but were lucky enough to find other accommodation. ‘The day after we moved into this apartment, Jews were forbidden from moving into new apartments.’

A year after the Germans arrived, around 5,000 Jews were deported from Prague to the ghetto in Littmannstadt (Łódź), in quick succession on five transports on 16, 21, 26 and 31 October and 3 November 1941. The third transport included 130 children and juveniles aged under 18 years, followed by a further 112 in the fourth transport. The ghetto proved to be a transit camp on the way to murder in Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmo nad Nerem 70 kilometres away. Of the Jews deported from Prague in 1941, only 277 survived.⁶⁹

Hagibor [‘hero’] was a Jewish sports club in Prague. And, as the freedom of movement of Jewish children became more and more restricted, Jiří and Zdeněk went increasingly to the club. It was now only a small playing area next to what used to be the larger Hagibor sports ground.⁷⁰ Three times a week, the Steiner twins got up early in the morning to walk to the sports ground 4 kilometres away. Activities for children were organized there in summer until 6 p.m. Because of the curfew, they had to be home by 8 p.m. at the latest. Jiří and Zdeněk would like to have gone to Hagibor every day. This wasn’t possible because there wasn’t room for everyone. So many children wanted to go there. On other days, they passed the time at the New Jewish Cemetery in the Žižkov district, where Franz Kafka was buried.

The Hagibor children and juveniles stuck together: ‘We spent a great time there and made lots of friendships, some of which were maintained even in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.’

The children were supervised in Hagibor, above all, by Fredy Hirsch, a young German Jew from Aachen. Like many other Jews, he had fled to Czechoslovakia after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935.⁷¹ Jiří And Zdeněk were to meet up with him again several times. During the German occupation, Hagibor was one of the few distractions. ‘We weren’t allowed to go to the theatre or cinema anymore.’

Later, a camp was established on the sports ground for women and men in ‘mixed marriages’, as they were called by the Nazis, who had refused to abandon their Jewish spouses.⁷²

Dáša Friedová When Dáša and her sister Sylva, three years older than her, were no longer allowed to go to the regular school in Prague, they also met for illegal lessons in private homes.

There were five children of my age. An unemployed woman teacher taught us all kinds of things. My sister went to a different home for lessons.

The fear grew incessantly. We didn’t like going outside anymore, even before Jews were prohibited from doing so. For example, I found it degrading no longer to be allowed to walk on the pavement but only in the gutter next to it. And fewer and fewer non-Jewish friends visited us.

The Fried family had to move three times. ‘Ultimately, we lived with two other families in a three-room apartment. We now had one room for four people with almost no room to play.’

Contact with non-Jewish family friends broke off almost completely. But there were still ‘courageous people’ who ‘hid food under their coats and brought it to us’, which was strictly forbidden. When Jews were ordered to wear a yellow star, from mid-September 1939, Dáša began to realize for the first time that ‘we are different, although we look like everyone else’.

‘People we knew’ were among the 5,000 Jewish children, women and men deported in October and November 1941 to the Littmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto. ‘They were only allowed to take a few personal effects and had to leave everything else behind. We didn’t know at the time where they were being taken. But we quaked with fear. What was to become of us?’

While in exile, Franz Werfel, the Jewish writer born in Prague, wrote the poem ‘The City of an Emigrant’s Dreams’:

Yes, I am right, it is the well-known street.

I’ve lived here thirty years without a change …

Is this the street? I’m driven by a strange

Compelling force there with the mass to meet.

A barrier looms … Before I can retreat

My arm is roughly seized: ‘Please show your pass!’

My pass? Where is my pass? In a morass

Of scorn and hate I move with faltering feet.

Can the human soul endure such anxious fear?

Steel scourges that will strike me whistle near.

The last I know upon my knees I’m flung …

And while I’m spat on by an unseen crowd,

‘I have done nothing wrong’, I scream aloud,

‘Except I spoke in your own tongue, my tongue.’⁷³

Lydia Holznerová fell sick a few days before the arrival of the German troops:

I got diphtheria on 10 March 1939 and was admitted to hospital in the district capital of Náchod. Even as I child, I already knew that the Nazis were somehow dangerous. And when I woke up early on 15 March 1939, I heard people saying that the German army had entered Náchod. My mother visited me in the hospital that afternoon. I was in an isolation ward and visitors weren’t allowed. We spoke through a closed window. I remember screaming and asking my mother: ‘Are the Germans in Hronov?’ And my mother started to cry.

She was only able to finish Year 4.

But as my father was well known in Hronov, the headmistress of my school helped. There was an unemployed teacher in the town whom she recommended to my father. She gave him the school curriculum. The teacher came to our home and gave me lessons. My father paid him, which was illegal, of course, and risky for us and for the teacher.

Her sister Věra was able to complete her schooling at the Jewish grammar school in Brno. She could not be issued a proper school-leaving certificate, only an ‘ersatz certificate’.

From June 1939, all Jewish assets were secured. German trustees were installed, especially in profitable companies like Emil Holzner’s textile wholesale business. He was no longer allowed to go there.

He purchased a weaving loom and wove fabrics at home. ‘Soon two other families moved in with us. There was very little room left for us. Then the trustee wanted to live in the house. We had to move out. Acquaintances in Hronov took us in. Now we had just one room for four people.’ The family were still relatively fortunate. They had sufficient savings to survive for two years after the business transfer. They were even able to help relatives who had fled to Prague by giving them small or larger amounts of money. Contact with non-Jews in Hronov remained intact.

The woman who had worked as a housekeeper with the Holzners helped where she could, ran errands and brought a few items that made day-to-day living at least a little easier. Other friends hid furniture and clothing for the Holzners, because, after 1939, Jews had to declare their assets. Valuables and securities had to be surrendered.⁷⁴ A German business friend in Dvůr Králové, also in eastern Bohemia, kept Věra’s trousseau. One of Lydia’s uncles had married a Christian who refused to divorce. ‘Whenever necessary, we called her to take care of things.’

Lydia continued to play with the neighbourhood children, even in the evening, although it was forbidden for Jews to leave the house after 8 p.m. ‘It was possible because our house and the neighbouring houses had gardens in the back. We children climbed over the fence and played together after 8 p.m. The neighbours did not object, although it was risky for them.’

Lydia Holznerová never forgot one day in early 1942:

We were already forced to wear the yellow star. We only had one star. On that spring day, I put on a light coat without the star and went into town. I met my girlfriends there and we were walking around. When I got home, my father was waiting for me at the door. When I opened it, I saw he was holding a stick. He hit me with it. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him. ‘Look at yourself! Do I have to have people come and tell me that you’re running around town without a star? You are putting your family and your friends in danger.’

Emil Holzner had had bad experiences with the Gestapo, having spent a week in prison on some unclear charge, and paying a large amount of money to be released. The experience had changed him:

When my father came back, he ordered that all of the hidden objects were to be brought back and that every last item was to be handed in. He didn’t want to keep anything. Although his friends said they would keep the things, he wouldn’t have it. My father never told me what the Gestapo did to him. He was completely drained when he came back.

Yehuda Bacon Yehuda particularly remembers 14 June 1940, the day German troops entered Paris.⁷⁵ As his parents were no longer allowed to work in Ostrava, they were forced to sublet some of their apartment. Mrs Florian, a tenant, was visited on that day by her son, who was in the German Wehrmacht.

He was drunk, gave us a dirty look and said: ‘You’ll all be eliminated soon like they’re doing in the East. If I wanted to, I would just have to say the word and you’d be kicked out of your home straightaway. But I’m not like that.’ Then he looked at me sympathetically and said: ‘I’m sorry for you. You don’t look particularly Jewish. I’m sorry on your account.’

Yehuda had initially attended a Jewish primary school in the town of his birth. He didn’t go to grammar school, since the Nazi laws prohibited Jews from obtaining secondary education. To secure as wide-ranging an education as possible for the pupils, however, a few additional classes were added on to the primary school. ‘Until 1941/42 the school was semi-official. Later, the classes were completely forbidden and we had “krousky”, teaching circles, that were illegal and took place in private homes with six to eight pupils.’

Around the end of 1941, two ‘halutzim’ (Jewish pioneers for Eretz Israel, the biblical name for the land of Israel) came. They wanted originally to flee to Slovakia and said that all Jews in Prague were sitting with their suitcases packed because they could expect to be rounded up for transport at any moment. ‘They asked us to flee with them. We thought that the atrocities they related were not true. Perhaps we didn’t want to believe them.’ Two of Yehuda’s teachers, Sissi Eisinger and Jakov Wurzel, both 24 years old, came from Brno. ‘And suddenly they were summoned for transport, because the people from Brno were taken away earlier.’

Yehuda can still remember their departure. ‘Jakov Wurzel told us a Hasidic story, that every person has a “nitzotz”, a spark, and that this spark bursts into flame once in every person. He was trying to say, I think, that everyone can show spiritual and moral greatness at some point in their life.’ The pupils were so moved that they cried, ‘with only a slight inkling at the time what the parable meant’.