Born and Living in Germany until the Age of Twelve: a Brief Account

    I am now reading Laurence Rees’s recent book, Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss. While much of the account is familiar from prior reading, there is also a good deal that is new to me, especially details—people, specific events. It’s a well-crafted book, even if the author reminds us more often than needed that such and such a whatever is a function of Hitler’s charisma. That doesn’t explain as much as Mr. Rees believes. But reading that book has reminded me of my own life in Germany and is now prompting me to set down, in brief, what I remember of those years.

   I was born in Heidelberg in 1927 and my guess is that relevant recollections of mine start when I was about six years old. While that was the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, I was of course not aware of that. I do remember my first-grade teacher, Fräulein Sonnenschein, whom I probably also had in second grade, if I’m right in recalling Herr Müller as my teacher in the third. During the earliest of these years I also played with kids in our neighborhood, though that recollection is very fuzzy.

   Then things changed very radically, in conformity with the anti-Jewish legislation of 1935, the so-called Nürnberg Laws. The neighborhood kids no longer played with us and all Jewish kids were kicked out from German public schools. At first that lead to a segregated Jewish class within a public school building. I reached it by bicycle since it was on the other side of the Neckar from our house in Neuenheim. But soon that stage followed by the establishment of a small Jewish school, housed in a building on the Bunsenstraße belonging to a Jewish organization the name of which I can’t conjure up. Our main teacher was Herr Durlacher who had lost his job as a Jewish public school teacher, but we also had a couple of Jewish teachers who had been dismissed from Gymnasium jobs and didn’t quite what to do with little kids like us.

   During those same years we had religious instruction from Lehrer Jacob and quite faithfully observed Jewish holidays. While that didn’t go so far as to prohibit us from turning lights on and off on the Sabbath, it required us to walk to services at the synagogue in the Old City across the river, since riding was forbidden on Shabbat and some holidays.

   This all ended on November 9, Kristallnacht. My father had been advised to stay out of the house in the hope that things would soon return to normal. But he decided to stay in our apartment. They came for him early in the evening; “they” being very polite officers of the Heidelberg police. Their advice was to take a warm coat, since he was headed for Dachau, the concentration camp, much colder because more elevated.                                                                  

   He got out in January, haggard, but not physically injured. We had been fortunate to have a low number for appearing at the American consulate in Stuttgart and that’s where we went to get our visa to the US. For me, age 11, the most remarkable fact was seeing someone writing with his left hand.

   Back in Heidelberg, the furnishings that were going to New York were being loaded into “Lifts” (forerunners of containers), with each item that left the house being checked off as being on the permitted to-go list as it was leaving the house.

   My 12^th birthday was recognized if not exactly celebrated before we left for the train that would take us out of Germany. When the Rheingold got to the Dutch border, the passengers were ordered to get out on the platform to be checked. A dignified older gentleman in our car spoke up, “Aber nicht die Leute mit Kinder!” (But [surely] not the people with children), so we had our papers checked in the car. After a while the train took off and we were in Holland, out of Germany. 

      

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