Silent Refuge

by Margrit Rosenberg Stenge

  When I was only four years old, my father became very ill. He had been a soldier in World War i and imprisoned by the French shortly after the war broke out. While in captivity, he gained proficiency in the French language, but the poor living conditions affected his health. His poor health became apparent when he suddenly became ill in 1932. The first diagnosis was diabetes, and, as if this were not enough, he was later found to be suffering from tuberculosis as well.

  After that diagnosis, I saw my parents even less. They travelled frequently to Switzerland, where the air was said to be good for my father. Sometimes I would join them there with my nanny.

  During the next few years, my father had several very serious operations, and my mother never left his side. When my father’s health permitted it, my parents went on business trips, mainly to Scandinavia. Without my mother’s constant and devoted care and attention, my father would undoubtedly have succumbed to his illnesses even more prematurely than he ultimately did.

  My father’s illness had a profound impact on me. From early childhood on and for years to come, I shared my mother’s anxiety and worries. The rhythm of our family life always depended on my father’s state of health. I was a very quiet little girl, always taking care not to disturb the gentle, loving man who was my Vati. A smile and a kiss from him made it all worthwhile — I loved him so.

  There were also other serious changes on the horizon. Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and although this event had little immediate impact, if any, on our lives, it was not long until we began to feel the consequences of the political upheaval.

  When I was six years old, I was enrolled in a neighbourhood school. An old photo in my mother’s album shows me on my first day of school: a rather ordinary looking, smiling little girl with short brown hair, proudly displaying a colourful cone-shaped bag filled with candies. At the time, every student in Grade 1 was handed such a bag at the end of the first day of school.

  Before school started the following year, I knew that something fundamental had changed in my life. I became aware that to be Jewish was to be different when I had to attend the Jewish school in Cologne rather than my old school nearby. This turned out to be a very good change. I loved my new teacher, who taught us not only reading, writing and arithmetic but also Ivrit (Hebrew), which opened a whole new world for me. My schoolmates came from all over the city. I formed many new friendships, but it was Vera who became my best friend. Our parents were friendly too, so Vera and I were able to see each other after school as well. Vera eventually immigrated to the United States with her parents, got married at an early age and unfortunately contracted polio shortly afterwards. She was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life and died many years ago.

  Around 1934 or 1935, we moved into a new house at Marienburger Strasse 52 on a beautiful tree-lined street. There were a few living rooms, a large kitchen and several bedrooms upstairs. One of the downstairs rooms led out to a lovely garden with a fountain. Adjoining the service entrance was a dog kennel, which later housed a German shepherd dog.

  In retrospect, I wonder at my parents’ decision to buy this house at a time of considerable political unrest in Germany. However, this house at Marienburger Strasse 52 was my father’s dream house. He and I often walked in the garden or sat on a bench there to have a quiet conversation — just the two of us. At that time, we had several servants, including a cook. The Fräulein, who occupied the room next to mine, was Jewish and the nicest nanny I ever had. She was also my last.

  This house survived the war, which was a miracle. Cologne was bombed extensively by the Allies, but, as I learned years later, Marienburger Strasse 52 sustained only minor damage.

  During the next few years, there were holiday trips to Italy with my parents and Fräulein, and my mother and father continued to travel without me on business. My father’s health remained frail but manageable. One year a whooping cough epidemic broke out in Cologne, and because the doctor thought I had a mild case of the illness, I was immediately dispatched with my nanny to a region in Germany called the Schwarzwald, where the air was supposed to be good for my cough. I can still recall our walks through the woods and the wonderful scent of pine trees.

  After changing schools, I came to realize that there was a certain stigma attached to being Jewish. I overheard conversations between my parents about Hitler and the antisemitism he preached, even though they did not yet believe that this had anything to do with them. As my father once told me, “Unsere Familie hat hier in Deutschland seit dem sechzehnten Jahrhundert gelebt” (Our family has lived here in Germany since the sixteenth century), so Hitler’s policies could not possibly affect us. My father had even received the Iron Cross for bravery during World War i, and our home and business were in Germany. But as Hitler’s voice was heard more frequently on the radio, my father grew exceedingly upset over Hitler’s ranting and raving, which for the most part was directed against the Jews.

  Our house and garden were set back from the street, and a low wall surrounded our property. One day, when I was in the garden playing by myself, a gang of young people gathered outside and started throwing rocks over the wall. When my father appeared, they ran off. My parents considered this incident extremely serious. Our home had been violated. That day in 1937 my childhood came to an end, and nothing was ever the same. I was never again allowed to leave our house unaccompanied, and my sense of security was gone forever.

  I am absolutely certain that had we been able to leave Germany just then, we would have. But stringent laws had been passed prohibiting Jews from emigrating from Germany, and just as stringent were the laws and quota systems imposed in most countries, banning Jewish immigration. My father’s medical history further complicated our situation.

  My favourite Fräulein left, I believe, in 1937. I remember saying a tearful goodbye to her, feeling that my world was truly collapsing. But then — a big surprise. My cousin Erna, my father’s sister’s daughter, joined our household, and she became my all-time favourite companion. Erna, eleven years older than I, was a young woman with a sweet disposition who was always ready to pay attention to me. She was pretty, with fine features and beautiful curly hair. What I remember best is that she called me “Gritchen,” which I loved.

  Erna left for England with her older sister, Annie, in 1938. At the time, England admitted young Jewish women with the proviso that they work there as domestics, which both my cousins did until the end of the war. By then, they had earned their permanent residency in England. Annie remained in England all her life, married an Englishman, had a daughter, Sylvia, and eventually died in England. At the end of the war, Erna went back to Germany as an interpreter for the Allied forces, where she met her future husband, Erwin Brauner, also a German Jew. They settled in Birmingham, England. The rest of the family in Neuss, in response to the rise of the Nazis, spread around the world: my cousin Walter, the oldest in the family, made aliyah to Palestine and was one of the co-founders of Kibbutz HaZore’a, and my cousin Max, the youngest, immigrated to the United States. My father’s sister Selma and her husband, Hermann, were deported and killed by the Germans.

  •

  In 1938, for reasons I have never understood, my parents decided to travel one more time on a short vacation in Italy with me. Letters had reached them from the family in Wächtersbach, indicating that antisemitic incidents had increased alarmingly. My father feared for our safety, and on our way back from Italy to Cologne, we stopped in Wächtersbach. That very night, shortly after my grandmother, Elfriede and I had gone to bed, we heard the now familiar sounds of broken glass.1 I was terrified. An unruly mob had gathered outside our windows, most likely because they were aware of our presence. The stone bombardment continued for several hours. Almost every window in the house was shattered, and when a piece of glass was found in my grandmother’s bed the following morning, it was obvious that the time for decisions had come.

  Consequently, our whole family travelled
back to Cologne by train the following morning. My uncles and aunts had packed only what was absolutely necessary. The decision for them to move to Cologne must have been extremely traumatic for everyone, except for Elfriede and me. I was so excited about the prospect of living in the same house as my cousin that nothing else mattered at the time, and for Elfriede, too, this seemed a wonderful new adventure.

  The reason for this move was that the bigger cities were considered safer than the villages and towns. There were fewer Jews living in the smaller places, which made them more vulnerable, and my parents felt that the family would be safer in Cologne than in the small town that had been their home.

  The next few months were difficult for all the adults in our house. My mother was not used to life with a big family, and all the maids had left because, according to Hitler’s new laws, they could no longer be employed by Jews. My aunts were used to doing their own housework and took care of everything, and I remember well how we all ate together around a large table in the dining room. This was a welcome change for me, since I was used to having my meals with only my Fräulein, and for the first time in my life no one paid any attention to how much or how little I ate. Elfriede and I attended school as if everything were normal, and this time we spent together in Cologne so long ago has kept us close throughout our lives.

  In 1938, the situation became more precarious each day. Onkel (Uncle) Gustav had applied for an immigration visa to the United States earlier on and expected to hear from the American consulate any day. Tante Selma’s brother, who lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, had acted as guarantor for his sister and her family. Without such a guarantor, it was virtually impossible at that time to obtain a visa to the States.

  By September 1938, my parents had become very nervous. My father was not strong enough physically to deal effectively with the major problems facing us all, and it was my mother’s decision that she and Vati go on one more business trip, albeit this time with a different purpose — to look for a country in which we could find refuge. It was still possible to leave Germany for short periods of time. My parents decided to bring along the chemical formulas for my father’s own particular brand of house paint, in order to exchange them for possible employment. I can still picture the slim volumes in black bindings that contained probably his most valuable assets at the time. Smuggling the formulas out of the country was dangerous, but my parents felt they had no choice.

  Since Cologne was then in the grip of a polio epidemic, the schools were closed. At dinner the evening before my parents were supposed to leave, I suddenly burst into tears and told them that this time I did not want to be left behind, ostensibly because of the polio epidemic. In truth, there were other reasons why I could not bear to be separated from my parents then. I did not really know my aunts and uncles well; they were a tight-knit family and I felt like an outsider. The entire situation in our household was very unusual and strange. Being a rather perceptive and grown-up little girl, I knew that life in Germany was becoming more dangerous each day, and I worried that I might never see my parents again.

  This was unusual behaviour for the docile little girl who had been left behind on many occasions with only a nanny as company. I suppose my display of emotion at the time impressed upon my parents that it would not be wise to leave me behind, even though our destination was still unknown. Since my father had business connections in Brussels, this would be our first stop.

  The following morning we boarded a train with the hope that Belgium would be the country where we would be able to find our new home. Little did I know that I would not return to Cologne and that I would never again see my grandmother, Tante Karolienchen and Onkel Natan.

  My grandmother died in Cologne in 1940 and is buried there.

  After being sent to live in a Jewish house in Cologne, Tante Karolienchen and Onkel Natan were deported to Riga, from where they never returned.

  I didn’t know my mother’s parents’ fate until my son visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington decades after the war and looked for their names on a computer register. He found both my grandparents’ names, with a note saying that they had been deported first to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz, where they perished.

  * * *

  1This event, occurring months earlier, foreshadows the infamous Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht. This series of pogroms took place in Germany and Austria between November 9 and 10, 1938. Over the course of twenty-four hours, ninety-one Jews were murdered, 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps, two hundred synagogues were destroyed and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes were ransacked.

  My First Cruise

  Despite the fact that I left the country of my birth more than a lifetime ago, in my heart I know that the little German Jewish girl I was still lives deep inside me. My life’s journey has taken me to several countries, but if truth be told, I do not feel that any of them is my own. Germany is only the country where I happened to be born, but when I hear certain Lieder (songs) or German expressions that remind me of my childhood, I feel an unexplainable sadness. At times I have been called a Jecke, a less than flattering expression for a German Jew, because of certain traits I have always had, such as being hardworking and organized. True, these are German characteristics, but in my case they are my father’s legacy.

  After arriving in Belgium, it soon became apparent that there were no business opportunities for my father there, and my parents decided to continue on to Scandinavia, where he was well known. But there was a major problem. Taking me along on a journey like this was out of the question. My father needed all of my mother’s attention and care, and I would simply be an additional burden.

  My parents had met the Nussbaum family while they were still living in Germany. The Nussbaums had been able to leave Germany and had settled in Brussels. A quick solution to our travel problem had to be found, and my parents got in touch with Herr (Mr.) and Frau (Mrs.) Nussbaum to inquire if they could possibly look after me until such time that our situation resolved itself. They agreed. In retrospect, I assume that the Nussbaums were well paid for their efforts. After all, they, too, were refugees, and the extra income would have been welcome. This was the first time that my parents had to make an unusual decision that concerned me — to leave me in the hands of virtual strangers. It would by no means be the last time that I was put to the test.

  Instead of being with family in Cologne, I was now with strangers in Brussels, but I quickly adjusted to my new life and soon came to love it. The Nussbaums were an extraordinary family and quite different from mine. They had three children — a boy older than I, a younger girl and a small baby whose gender I do not remember. Frau Nussbaum was in the early stages of another pregnancy, which none of the children including myself was aware of. They were a warm, close-knit Orthodox Jewish family, where Shabbat and Jewish holidays were strictly observed, and I loved being a part of their lives.

  The Nussbaums’ apartment was beautifully furnished. Persian carpets covered the floors of the living and dining rooms. A piano stood in the corner of the living room. The Nussbaums had likely left Germany before restrictions were imposed, so that they had been able to take some of their belongings with them.

  I did not go to school during the three months I stayed in Brussels, but I did manage to learn some French and spent my days with Frau Nussbaum and the younger children. Frau Nussbaum was a wonderfully patient mother, who obviously enjoyed spending time with us children. She would read to us, play simple little melodies on the piano and take us for walks while Herr Nussbaum was at work. I did not want to think of the day that I would have to leave my new family.

  In the meantime, my parents had visited Sweden and Denmark without any luck. But all that changed when they came to Oslo, Norway. My father contacted Nordiske Destillationsverker, a fairly large company and a customer of Kölner Farbenfabrik, and offered them his paint formulas
in exchange for a position. The people at Nordiske obviously recognized the value of such a proposal and promised my father the position of director of their new paint manufacturing division. Proof of employment guaranteed a work permit for my father and Norwegian immigration visas for both my parents.

  With these documents in hand, my parents returned briefly to Germany to try to salvage some household goods with which to begin our lives in Norway. Our family was still living in our house on Marienburger Strasse, and it must have been unimaginably painful for my parents to say goodbye to them, not knowing what the future held in store for any of us.

  As soon as they were able to, my parents rented a tiny furnished apartment at Kirkeveien 104 in Oslo, consisting of a living room with a bed that folded into the wall (a Murphy bed), a bedroom, a kitchen and a bath. Vati started his new career and so did my mother — housekeeping. This change was very difficult for her, since in all her thirty-six years she had never done any of the housework. Being in a foreign country made things even more difficult for her. True, she had been to Norway many times before, but always as a guest in hotels or in people’s homes, and even the language, although it was familiar, was strange once she had to use it on a daily basis. My father adapted quickly to his new surroundings. His colleagues were supportive, and it did not take long for the new paint division to prosper under my father’s leadership.

  But I was still in Belgium. Although my father applied for my immigration visa as quickly as he was able to, it took much longer than expected to receive this document. It was unheard of to keep a child separated from her parents for any length of time for lack of a visa, but it was rumoured that one of the Norwegian immigration officials was a Nazi, and he caused one delay after another. Finally, in late December 1938, the visa arrived.