CHAPTER FOUR. WHO SHE WAS
This much I know: Information in this chapter comes from: Marcin Wodziński and Janusz Spyra, eds., Jews in Silesia (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, and Wrocław: University of Wrocław, Research Centre for the Culture and Languages of Polish Jews, 2001); Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005); and Jiri Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (Prague: Sefer, 1991).
By the early 1930s, smart girls like Valy were sent to Vienna to study: See Harriet Pass Freidenreich, Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
“The Third Reich will win again”: Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. 1, 1933–1941 (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 268.
Valy’s mother’s file: Toni Scheftel’s aryanization papers translated for the author by Ulrike Wiesner.
CHAPTER FIVE. BERLIN
Before my grandfather had even left Europe: Statistics here are from Wolf Gruner, “Poverty and Persecution: The Reichsvereinigung, the Jewish Population, and Anti-Jewish Policy in the Nazi State 1939–1945,” www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203214.pdf; and Gruner, Judenverfolgung [Jewish Persecution] in Berlin, 1933–1945 (Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, 2009), translated for the author by Kathleen Luft.
women were often seen as having needs secondary to those of men: Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 138–141.
“The emigration problem demanded our greatest labors”: Testimony of Alfred Schwerin, in Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, pp. 401–402.
Kindergartenseminar: Gudrun Meierhof, “The Jewish Seminar for Teachers in Kindergartens and After-School-Care Facilities, 1934–1942,” translated for the author by Ulrike Wiesner. Unpublished manuscript provided by author.
the League of Jewish Women, a remarkable feminist organization: Lara Daemmig and Marion Kaplan, “Juedischer Frauenbund (The League of Jewish Women),” Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/juedischer-frauenbund-league-of-jewish-women.
Marianne Strauss: See Mark Roseman, A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany (New York: Picador, 2002).
Only works by Jews could be performed: Testimony of Alfred Schwerin, in Monika Richarz, ed., Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 401–402.
the population of Jews under age thirty-nine decreased by nearly eighty percent: Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, p. 143.
I pick up historian Wolf Gruner’s book: Gruner, Judenverfolgung [Jewish Persecution] in Berlin, 1933–1945.
she later wrote a book—called Outcast in English: Inge Deutschkron, Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin (New York: Fromm International, 1989).
“My registration number is very high”: Hertha Feiner, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters, January 1939–December 1942, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993).
Germany’s numbers, officially, weren’t actually all that low: Author interview with Professor Richard Breitman, August 8, 2012.
CHAPTER SIX. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS
the deportation of the Jews of Stettin: Christopher Browning with Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), p. 64 and preceding pages.
“Men, women, children and even the inmates of the local Jewish home for the aged”: From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 19, 1940, “Koenigsberg Jews Slated for Expulsion; Stettin Deportees Put at 1,500,” http://www.jta.org/1940/02/19/archive/koenigsberg-jews-slated-for-expulsionstettin-deportees-put-at-1500.
In January, Jews had been denied legumes: Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, p. 151.
“Solveig’s Song” lyrics: Translated from the Norwegian with the help of Ingvild Torsen, Eli Nilsen, and Nancy Aarsvold.
“The successes in the West are prodigious”: Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, pp. 337–338.
Earlier that spring . . . thirty thousand people had applied: Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, pp. 410–411.
CHAPTER SEVEN. THE VISE
In January 1941, Jews are denied the right to repair their shoes: Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, p. 170.
Gerda Haas, giving testimony to the Holocaust Museum: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Gerda Haas, June 12, 1995, www.ushmm.org.
“we are convinced that in reality America wants to help”: Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, pp. 412–424.
the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, founded in 1756, was kept open: See Daniel B. Silver, Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis (New York: Mariner Books, 2004).
James G. McDonald, who served as high commissioner for refugees: Quoted passages here are from Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg, eds., Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 200–205, 214, 239, 245.
“We can delay and effectively stop”: Memo from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to the State Department, June 26, 1940, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/barmemo.html.
“I wish to say . . . that if I had my way”: Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg, Refugees and Rescue, p. 248 (and Congressional Record).
The New York Times published a front-page story blaring: “U.S. Ruling Cuts Off Means of Escape for Many in Reich,” The New York Times, June 19, 1941, retrieved online January 14, 2013.
“Bars have now been raised”: Editorial, The New Republic, August 18, 1941.
Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was tripped up: Patricia Cohen, “In Old Files, Fading Hopes for Anne Frank’s Family,” The New York Times, February 15, 2007.
“Rabbi Wise always assumes such a sanctimonious air”: Breckinridge Long diary, quoted in Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg, Refugees and Rescue, p. 257.
Levetzowstrasse Synagogue: See Roger Moorehouse, Berlin at War (New York: Vintage, 2011), p. 161.
“And I remembered Storm’s ‘Oktoberlied’”: Valy refers to the German poet Theodor Storm (1817–1888). The lyrics to “October Song” (translated by Ulli Wiesner) are as follows:
The rising fog, the falling leaves:
to wine we are beholden!
The grayish day no longer grieves:
it’s golden, yes, it’s golden!
And if all madness be unfurled
(by church or temple polished),
this world, this most amazing world,
can never be demolished.
And even if the heart should smart
let glasses sound the meeting!
For all we know, a righteous heart
will never stop its beating.
The rising fog, the falling leaves:
to wine we are beholden!
The grayish day no longer grieves:
it’s golden, yes, it’s golden!
Though it is fall, wait just a while,
just wait and keep consuming!
The spring arrives, the sky is blue,
the violets are blooming.
The days of blue shall be at hand,
and ere they all shall leave us,
we’ll let the wine, my noble friend,
reprieve us, yes, reprieve us.
20,000 Jews to be deported to Lodz and Washington knew: George Warren (later adviser on refugees and displaced persons) files, Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg, Refugees and Rescue, p. 258.
“I have the impression even the J
ewish Council”: Jürgen B, in Donald L. Niewyk, ed., Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 260–261.
CHAPTER EIGHT. BURGFRÄULEIN
On the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden: See the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, https://cahjp.huji.ac.il, A/176 Jewish Virtual library. Also Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/index.asp.
some 270,000 to 300,000 were able to emigrate . . . In Berlin itself . . . some 5,000 to 7,000: Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, chapter 8, “Life Underground,” and p. 228.
Ahawah day-care center: Its story is told in Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair, p. 176.
the role of the Reichsvereinigung: Information comes from author interviews with Beate Meyer, and from her essays “Between Self-Assertion and Forced Collaboration: The Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1939–1945” and “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” in Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon, and Chana Schütz, eds., Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
In 1942, Marianne Strauss . . . was able to discover a glimpse: Roseman, A Past in Hiding, chapter 7, “Report from Izbica.”
“A dreadful future awaited them”: Interview with Edith Dietz, quoted in Meyer, “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” p. 320.
On the increasing difficulty for even Jews in mixed marriages: See Martin Doerry, My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944, trans. John Brownjohn (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004).
“These deportations were something monstrous”: Camilla Neumann, quoted in Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, pp. 435–436.
In early January 1942, Valy and her mother were forced to turn in: All Berlin Jews must turn in warm items per Wolf Gruner; see Gruner, Judenverfolgung.
“To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders”: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, in The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 348–349.
“To claim that demonstrative refusal, open resistance”: Meyer, “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” pp. 346–347.
the story of Wilhelm Reisz: Doron Rabinovici, “Prologue,” Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938–1945 (Cambridge and Oxford, England: Polity, 2011).
“Of some forty women who helped in the beginning”: Herta Pineas, in testimony of Hermann Pineas, in Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, pp. 449–455.
Hildegard Henschel, wife of one of the higher-ups: Hildegarde Henschel’s Eichmann trial testimony is retrieved from www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/index-02.html.
video testimony from Norbert Wollheim: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Norbert Wollheim, recorded 1992, www.ushmm.org.
CHAPTER NINE. A NEW NAME
the property files and Gestapo materials: I’m grateful to the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam, for copying files and sending them to me. I relied on Rep. 36 A Oberfinanzpräsident Berlin Brandenburg (F 1701) and (II) (Nr. 35551), as well as Rep. 35 A Staatspolizeistelle Potsdam (Nr. 13), regarding Valy’s mother, Toni Scheftel, geb. Flamm. The files on Hans Fabisch come from the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv as well: Landesarchiv Berlin A Rep. 092 Nr. 8636. The Compensation files on Fabisch are from the Landsamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Abt. I Entschädigungsbehörde, Reg. Nr. 303 696. All of the above were translated for the author by Kathleen Luft.
CHAPTER TEN. LONDON INTERLUDE
Searches placed in the Aufbau (Reconstruction): Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), p. 353.
“the voice of help and hope for thousands of Jewish refugees”: “Refugees’ Best Friend,” Time, November 23, 1959.
Mayer was profiled: Martin Gilbert, The Boys: The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). Mayer was himself the author of Jews and the Olympic Games—Sport: A Springboard for Minorities (London: Vallentine-Mitchell, 2004).
CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE ONLY POSSIBILITY
“What could we possibly talk about?”: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Gerda Haas, June 12, 1995, www.ushmm.org, p. 23.
photo of the Jewish Hospital’s notes on Hans: Personal collection of Carol Levene. Translated by Kathleen Luft.
Margot, the woman who would, after the war, become Ernest’s wife: See “Ann Arbor’s Ernest Fontheim,” Washtenaw Jewish News (Feb./March 2004), http://www.slowtale.net/writing/0204_WJN_Fontheim.pdf, and “Wallenberg Medal Honors Officer Who Hid Family, Refused to Join Nazis,” The University Record Online, http://www.ur.umich.edu/0405/Oct04_/04/05.shtml.
CHAPTER TWELVE. WHAT REMAINS
the transport of January 29, 1943: Information comes from the Yad Vashem website, www.yadvashem.org.
The Birkenau selection ramp so often depicted: See, for example, Götz Aly, Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931–1943, trans. Ann Millin (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), p. 77.
The IKG file: Files for Manele Wildmann were translated for the author by Anatol Steck.
Reuven Ben-Shem: See Laurence Weinbaum, “‘Shaking the Dust Off’: The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem),” Jewish Political Studies Review 22, no. 3–4 (Fall 2010), http://jcpa.org/article/shaking-the-dust-off-the-story-of-the-warsaw-ghettos-forgotten-chronicler-ruben-feldschu-ben-shem/#sthash.Rlbr761D.dpuf. Also Sarah Wildman, “Our Lost Warsaw Ghetto Diary,” Tablet, April 18, 2013, http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/129585/our-lost-warsaw-ghetto-diary.
“The dead are naked” and “January 1942. There’s talk recently of the vandals”: Translation and notes from Reuven Ben-Shem’s diary are from Weinbaum, “‘Shaking the Dust Off’: The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem).”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. ENTZÜCKEN
Hans’s Siemens work card, along with his files and those of Valy: These were provided by the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Translated by Kathleen Luft.
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