Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  From Salzburg, he and Lafon soon traveled to Munich. Though not mentioned in his letters, there happened to be several DP camps in the area. He wrote instead about war damage, and the state of society as witnessed on both sides of the torn landscape, within the limits of the DP camps and outside them. What he saw and felt would drive him to take a more active role in the compassionate welfare of those with whom he came into contact.

  Munich, July 13, 1945.

  The movement of the jeep made the camera sway, and the leather strap was pulling at his neck. Every time he pressed the silver button, the shutter closed around an image. The sound it made was an audible marker; every click framed devastation left in the wake of seventy-one Allied bombings. The ancient capital of Bavaria was on its knees but hadn’t begun to ask the world for forgiveness. Not yet; it was too soon. My father was certain of one thing: thus far in his life he had been very privileged and fortunate, but at that moment he felt no compassion for the blight and penury that stemmed from the Third Reich. In ruined Munich, only two hotels and about a quarter of the houses were still standing. The city center was demolished. Her population was diminished by half. Inhabitants wandered aimlessly about, shell-shocked and defeated. Though some streets gave an illusion of normalcy, upon closer inspection only the buildings’ façades stood behind the lush summer foliage. Lives once conducted within the privacy of homes were left exposed and vulnerable in the gaping remains of entire neighborhoods. Some streets sustained close to no damage, but they were among the few. In other areas, burnt-out buildings extended as far as the eye could see. Hanging from blown-out windows were white flags, begging for peace. Children climbed to previously unreachable treetops on hills of debris. While the light of evening was still strong enough, my father continued to record what he saw, shooting roll after roll of film as they neared Maximilianstrasse.

  Main railroad station, Munich, July 13, 1945.

  Then, as if by some reflex, he lapsed momentarily into his mother tongue and said under his breath, “Summa Summarem . . . es ist ein Vergnügen zu Besuch die Haupstadt der Bewegung. Nicht wert zu rekonstruieren.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Lafon.

  “Huh? Oh . . . nothing. I was thinking out loud. I said, ‘In sum total, it’s a pleasure to visit the capital of the movement. Not worth reconstructing. . . .’” He trailed off again.

  The Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Munich’s most opulent, had been a wellspring of Nazi activity. Not only did it play host to some of Hitler’s earliest supporters—members of a German occultist group called the Thule Society, whose logo was an abstracted swastika, the Sanskrit symbol of fertility, and whose unyielding goal of Aryan purity catapulted his career—but he and an entire cast of high-ranking Nazis had been its frequent guests. The bedrooms and banquet halls of the hotel had served the top echelon of the Reich and their lovers. In August 1939, Hitler addressed the Wehrmacht from one of its many meeting rooms. In March of 1944, most of the hotel was destroyed during an Allied bombing run, leaving only the part leading to Maximilianstrasse intact. On May 1, one week before the end of the war, it was requisitioned by the US Army.

  The hotel is located only two blocks away from where the remains of the Ohel-Jakob-Synagogue, wrecked on Kristallnacht, still lay on Herzog-Rudolf-Strasse. The synagogue had been burned to the ground on that infamous November night in 1938 when hundreds of synagogues were torched in Germany and Austria, tens of thousands of Jews were arrested, and thirty-six were killed as violent retribution for the murder of the low-level secretary, Ernst Vom Rath, of the German embassy in Paris, by a German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan who had been sent to live with relatives in Paris because of the Nazi laws against Jews. The seventeen-year-old was outraged to hear what had happened to his family several weeks earlier, when the Nazis deported thousands of Polish Jews living in Germany by piling them into boxcars and sending them back to Poland. In a bold act of would-be resistance, Grynszpan acquired a gun and, intending to kill the ambassador, Count Von Welczeck, instead shot and killed the lowly secretary sent to find out what the boy wanted.

  So much happened under its roof, but the Vier Jahreszeiten remains the keeper of its Nazi secrets. Who knows what my father may have heard about the hotel’s past, but it does give me pause to think that he laid his head to rest where Hitler had slept too, and perhaps on the same down pillow or bed linen. The persecuted returned to one of the pantheons of the movement in its birthplace, and slept soundly in bed.

  During their two days in Munich, and in between official business, my father and Lafon spent their free time eating, drinking, and sourcing inventory for a little export business. If they were on the road and there was work to be done, my father would stop people in the street, perform an informal investigation, and offer cigarettes for information. Standard operating procedure. He had accumulated sixty packs of cigarettes, including his rations, and tobacco was fair trade. The mark (or Reichsmark, RM) still had value: a good bottle of wine went for 4.50 marks (about 45 cents), an illustrated postcard for 20 RM (two cents), and a horrible-tasting glass of something masquerading as beer for 30 pfennigs. While they ate at a small bistro, he bought thirty bottles of fine liqueur to bring back to Austria in addition to another forty or so that he would acquire when their journey to the Rhineland continued over the next few days. The plan was to sell the bottles at a good profit and render a service at the same time. Good liqueur was difficult to obtain in Austria.

  In the next few days, traveling on from Munich, my father had no choice but to remember and confront childhood memories as flashbacks paraded across his mind’s eye, as he drove along the flag-lined streets that formed his path to Landau.

  Heidelberg, July 16th, 1945

  Evening

  My Dears,

  Yesterday morning we left Munich for Stuttgart on the Autobahn. The Autobahn is in good shape, except for a few bridges. We passed by Ulm—a city completely RAZED except the shell of the cathedral and the surroundings.

  I took pictures there too. Stuttgart WAS a city. The center is no longer in existence, but I had a nice room because of the MIS* after my name at one of the two hotels that partially still exist. I shared it with a diplomatic courier from Yugoslavia, who travels between Paris and Rome. He, being Yugoslav, tells me that Tito’s regime, for which he works, is not Communist but pure and simple anarchy. He says that the political view of “willst Du Nicht Bruder, so schlag’ ich Dir den Schaedel ein” (If you don’t agree, brother, I’ll smash your head in!) is the order of the day for the intellectuals, and if they don’t agree with that they’ll be assassinated (and not by the Fascists). He tells me that France, which is truly far to the left, condemns Tito. He also tells me—we speak in French all the time—that the French have instituted a reign of terror in their zone—in short, they behave like the Germans did in France. They empty the cellars, they take the cars—EVERYTHING—I do my best to imitate them—to act like a savage. When I want something, I give them the choice of either selling it to me or I requisition it. If there’s any discussion, I take it. I have a new acquisition, a small pocket revolver, smaller than my hand—it’s just what I needed, 6.25 caliber, and it’s not a toy. At least, I know I can always carry that, because it’s no trouble and not a bother.

  The cathedral in Ulm, Germany.

  I was in Bretten at about noon. The first building had a red flag with Stalin’s image on it. It was a swimming pool requisitioned by the Russian ex-prisoners. Unfortunately, most of the little villages show little destruction. I also passed through Bruchsal, pretty damaged. Heidelberg is in fine shape, no damage—except for two bridges. One finds a lot of things and great meals as well. All of the stores are open. I’m writing to you from an ultra-chic house—three houses occupied by the Special Forces.

  I had a strange adventure this afternoon passing through the center of town. Suddenly, I came upon a scene that, for several reasons, seemed very familiar. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a store where I had a little accident many years befor
e. I never imagined I’d remember the place and could never have described what it looked like, but suddenly even seeing the place made me remember the incident. Tomorrow we’ll pass through Landau en route to Wiesbaden, where we have things to do.

  If I have enough time and the house is still standing, I’ll empty it of its “contents.” I don’t want the Boches to empty it. In all likelihood, I’ll ask a few French officers (it’s their occupied zone) to occupy the house. If I can find them, I’ll go into the other houses and empty them as well.

  Qui vivra verra!

  Please send me a pair of sunglasses, aviators. Well, tomorrow will be a long day.

  Good Night.

  Yours,

  Walter

  * * * *

  The countryside had changed almost beyond recognition, except for the Rhine River, whose magnificent waters wrapped the torn landscape in a silk ribbon. By late evening, my father and Lafon stopped for supper somewhere on the road, then drove the rest of the way to Landau. Turning into the first road that led toward the city center, they came upon an alley of red, white, and blue flags whose imagery was so striking that even in the darkness it was reminiscent of Monet’s lush painting, Rue St. Denis. The last time he had encountered such a welcome was after my family crossed the border at Moulin and arrived to Vichy in June 1940, with “USA” painted on their car in big white letters and Omi’s flag made of red, white, and blue rags blowing from the antenna. He could still hear the applause of the bystanders when they thought the Americans had finally arrived. This, on the other hand, was a street full of flags, the colors dancing and swaying like a celebration in the evening breeze.

  Moments later, their dusty green jeep pulled around to Industriestrasse 13 and my father said to Lafon, “Slow down. Here it is, number 13a. Let me out. This is a moment these people won’t soon forget.” From working and traveling together for a month now, Lafon and my father had developed a shorthand, bypassing the usual formality that separates rank.

  The route the two men had taken from Heidelberg earlier that afternoon had been stained by blood from centuries of conflict, dating back as far as the Crusaders. For centuries, Jews had a strong presence all along the southern Palatinate of the Rhineland. Time and again, enough survived massacres in the region to regain their foothold and reorganize their communities. Many of them became wine merchants like my family. The gold ring I inherited bears the insignia of a wolf with the letter W sitting in a shield under a crown. This insignia has been in my family for generations and was the logo for the Wolff family “Hauswein.”

  Every so often along the road, a shard of glass pointing up from the ruins of a synagogue took aim with the blinding white light from the mid-July sun. All over Germany, once-unique and beautiful pieces of architecture dotting towns and cities now lay in small hills of dusty red brick, twisted metal, and broken glass. The men and their puppy, Finito, passed through Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Rudesheim, and Speyer on their way to Landau, where my grandmother’s family once lived. Mannheim no longer existed. Its ruins were marked with graffiti that read: “Wir werden siegen—Und Jetzt Gerade—Fuehrer befhel—wir folgen—Sieg um Jeden Preis—Nieh mehr 9 November, 1918—etc. . . . etc. . . .” (We will win—now a straight line—Führer commands us—we will follow—victory at any price—no more November 9th, 1918 . . .).

  Destroyed buildings in Mainz, Germany.

  The underlying meaning of these words is eerie and grotesque. November 9 had been a signal date again and again throughout recent German history. In 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated his throne, fleeing to Holland and ushering in the German Revolution that ultimately gave birth to the Weimar Republic. In 1923 Hitler staged his Beer Hall Putsch in a failed attempt to take over the new government in Berlin. With the support of three thousand Nazis, he staged a march that was stopped by the police and ended with the death of sixteen of his supporters. Lastly, in 1938 Goebbels took advantage of the significance of the date to organize Kristallnacht, ordering the destruction of Jewish stores and property and then sending thousands of Jews to concentration camps, permanently marking it in history as the official start of the Shoah.

  Excluding the city of Frankenthal, which still had one American unit stationed there, this part of Germany was now a French zone extending to Mainz. Traveling through the French zone posed a new sort of difficulty for my father. Wherever he stopped to ask for directions, the French were shocked and confused by what appeared to be a countryman wearing an American uniform, and he was forced to explain the circumstances under which he came to be in the American army.

  Kühn home at Industriestrasse 13, Landau, Germany. Photo taken after my father took back the house from its occupiers, July 1945.

  During the earlier part of the day, my father and Lafon had stopped in Wiesbaden for several hours. At the end of the war, the Twelfth Army Group had transformed the town into one of two major collection points for evidence and looted artwork and as a base for the OSS—a secret intelligence branch whose many activities required German-Jewish translators and interrogators. Those who were actively involved in sorting through the masses of plundered art were aptly named the Monuments Men. An old champagne factory that included an inventory of four thousand bottles of sparkling wine and several other buildings were requisitioned and turned into document and interrogation centers, where my father helped a very understaffed Twelfth Army Group vet war criminals for prosecution at Nuremberg and Dachau, where the less notorious were sent. When they finally found the house on Industriestrasse, it was about 10:30 that night. I’ll let my father’s letter describe the rest of this most remarkable moment on his journey back from exile:

  Under New Management!

  National Party of the Third Reich

  Gauletung Salzburg (Kosher)

  Salzburg July 21st, 1945

  . . . To get to Landau we had to pass through Speyer and all the small villages you must have been familiar with. . . . Finally, after having asked a soldier and three civilians, I at last found the house. It’s true, it really is a beautiful house. Not damaged at all except for the windows. When I rang the bell, all the lights were turned off. I screamed, “Ich gebe Ihnen genau zwei Minuten zum Aufmachen, dann schiesse ich die Tür nieder!” (I will give you exactly two minutes, and then I will shoot the door down!)

  It took them exactly 30 seconds to open it. A man, trembling, opened it and asked me what I wanted. I told him I was the legal owner of the house, actually his nephew. He told me that the house belonged to a Mrs. Kopf.

  Losing patience, I told him that was really interesting, but he should open the gate immediately so I could enter with my car. During which time the families Kopf and Maatz (or Martz) were taken away. I declared that I wanted two beds with linen on the first floor. But I was assured that the apartment on the first floor was poorly furnished, and I went downstairs to the cellar with the captain, where I took the Kopf daughter’s room. She was married to a young Nazi, Jaeger.

  Naturally, all the Boches wanted an explanation of who I was, which left all of them with their mouths open. The older Kopf told me that Aunt Meti had ceded the house and that she was the legal owner—to which I responded that, if she would allow me to see the signed contract, I would believe her. I then said that I would consult with the French Military Government tomorrow. “Ich werde Sie dann benchrichtigen lassen über die Entscheidung die ich treffen werde.” (I will then advise you of the decision that has been made.)

  She then showed me the signed contract, which had been signed at the Polizei Praesidium between her and the Nazis and mentioned the laws of expropriation etc. . . . She paid 65,000 Mk. for the house, on which I gave her a little lecture about the morality of not buying stolen goods, etc. . . . etc. . . . all the while playing with my revolver.

  After that I sent everyone off to bed, telling them I wanted 6 eggs with breakfast at 9 o’clock tomorrow. I’m sorry you weren’t there. It was very amusing. We were in the second room to the right of the entry, and we took
the smaller living room, which was the third one down. The furniture was in good shape, but on the doors we could see cracked glass, etc., and we could see that it was a good house. A few panes were broken.

  Breakfast was served by the younger Jaeger, who had just come back from the army. Then I went to see the other tenants, asking them to pay (an average of) RM 95 a month. Everyone remembered Aunt Meti. One very elderly lady named Mme. Hertel was there. Her Jewish daughter-in-law was in Poland, and her son lost his life as a consequence. I told them, “Poland—dead.”

  Then I went into their office, told them I wanted 40 bottles of wine, this, that, and the other thing. I took the car then, drove to the center, and found the governing military body—on Paradeplatz to be exact. A street called Gerberstrasse is 75% destroyed, as is almost the entire town center. We had to clear the debris [so that we could pass through]. Paradeplatz is OK. A French WAC introduced me to the governor. I told him the story and asked that the house be emptied except for the elderly lady and French people put in it. He said they would empty it, but because Landau isn’t important, there are hardly any troops and it would be hard to place some in the house. I told him that was all right and gave him Aunt Meti’s address.

  After that, I visited the addresses of Aunt Erna, Aunt Hedvige, and Mai. All three homes were hardly damaged, but I had no time to go inside. I would have had them emptied too, but I didn’t know if they had been sold. I had a hard time finding those places because the Boche cops are so ignorant and give terrible directions. Then I took copious photographs of the houses from every side. Before leaving for Neustadt, I informed the dear family Kopf that the military government would communicate my decision to them. . . .