Acknowledgments
A journey both metaphorical and practical, such as the one I’ve described in this book, cannot even be conceived, much less realized, without some extraordinary assistance. I’m eager to express my deep and profound thanks to the many wonderful people who offered their help and guidance along the way.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., is an invaluable resource, both for its countless documents and, especially, for its staff of archivists and researchers. Many thanks to Michlean Amir, Diane Afoumado, Marc Masurovsky, and Scott Miller; one of the USHMM’s indefatigable European-based investigators, Peggy Frankston; and photo archivists Judith Cohen, Nancy Hartman, and Caroline Waddell.
I learned an immense amount of detail regarding the voyage of the St. Louis and the negotiations surrounding her return to Europe within the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York City. Staff researcher Misha Mitsel made my visit to the Joint particularly rewarding.
A special word of thanks to Herbert Karliner of Miami for sharing his memories of being a twelve-year-old passenger on board the St. Louis.
Singular thanks to Vicki Caron, the Diane and Thomas Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Cornell University, for generously providing me with a valuable article about the agricultural camp at Martigny-les-Bains and for passing on her vast knowledge of resources in Paris.
And my deepest thanks to three superb translators who enabled me to make sense of the many shards of evidence and remembrance I collected along the way: Alice Kelley, Christa Dub, and Margot Dembo. Merci and vielen Dank!
Once we landed in Europe, our path was made infinitely smoother and much more pleasant and worthwhile thanks to the following people: Anne and Theodor Beckmann, Erika Sembdner, Rita Schewe, and Oliver Glissmann in Sachsenhagen; and Hiltrud and Roland Neidhardt, Farschid Ali Zahedi, Dietgard Jacoby, Joerg Witte, Ottheinrich Hestermann, Annemarie Boyken, Anneliese Wehrmann, and Monica and Carsten Meyerbohlen in Oldenburg.
In France we received gracious assistance from Maurice Flamangin in Boulogne-sur-Mer; Madame Gerard Liliane and Julien Duvaux in Martigny-les-Bains; Monique and Jean-Claude Drouilhet in Montauban; Irene Dauphin in Agde; Elodie Montes and Marianne Petit in Rivesaltes; Odette Boyer and Katell Gouin in Les Milles; and Ingrid Janssen, Caroline Didi, and the archivists of the Museum of the Shoah in Paris. Thanks also to Piotr Supinski at the Memorial Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I’d like to take a moment for a posthumous note of thanks to Bob Silverstein, my former agent, who succumbed to cancer in October 2012. Bob was a reliable source of cheer and encouragement and I’ll always remember our jolly dinner in Paris. Sincere thanks also to Bob’s sister-in-law, Zohra Belkadi, who unearthed a number of valuable leads from her home in Lyon.
A hearty thank you to my new agent, Jim Levine, for believing in this project enough to take me on as a client and for finding Alex’s Wake a home at Da Capo Press. Many, many thanks to Da Capo’s executive editor, Bob Pigeon, for his incredible enthusiasm, bracing humor, and perceptive work in shaping the manuscript. Thanks also to publisher John Radziewicz, project editor Mark Corsey, marketers Kevin Hanover and Sean Maher, publicist extraordinaire Lissa Warren, and the rest of the magnificent Da Capo team. And a spirited go raibh maith agat to the McShea Institute for Irish Studies.
Closer to home, I’d like to thank Tamara Meyer for organizing and maintaining her monthly gatherings of second generation Jews. Warm thanks to the group—Vicki Killian, Anne Masters, Roy Kahn, Julie Litten, Carol Schaengold, Paul Meyer, and Diane Castiglione—for being a source of comfort as we continue to try to understand What It All Means. Special thanks to Vicki and three dear friends, Glen and Lauren Howard and Robert Aubry Davis, for reading early drafts of the manuscript and making so many valuable suggestions.
My profound appreciation and love to my new-found family members, Helen and Steven Behrens, and my cousin of long standing, Deborah Philips, for making the journey to Oldenburg and participating in the ceremony on Gartenstrasse.
Finally, and very simply, I could never have undertaken this journey without my wife and traveling companion, Amy Roach. The words “thank you” have never seemed so inadequate. YVOB
Bibliography
Breitman, Richard, and Allan J. Lichtman. FDR and the Jews. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Caron, Vicki. Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam, 1975.
Feuchtwanger, Lion. The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940. Trans. Elisabeth Abbott. New York: Viking, 1941.
Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Gellman, Irwin F. “The St. Louis Tragedy.” In American Jewish Historical Quarterly. December 1971.
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Henry Holt, 1985.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan, 1995.
Lipman-Wulf, Peter. Period of Internment: Letters and Drawings from Les Milles, 1939–1940. Sag Harbor: Canio’s Editions, 1993.
Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. New York: Random House, 1968.
Ogilvie, Sarah A., and Scott Miller. Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944. New York: Knopf, 1972.
Peschanski, Denis. La France des Camps: L’internement, 1938–1946. Paris: Gallimard, 2002.
Schaap, Klaus. “Der Novemberpogrom von 1938.” In Die Geschichte der Oldenburger Juden und ihrer Vernichtung. Ed. Udo Elerd and Ewald Gaessler. Oldenburg: Isensee Verlag, 1988.
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.
Steinbacher, Sybille. Auschwitz: A History. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Penguin Books, 2005.
Thomas, Gordon, and Max Morgan Witts. Voyage of the Damned. New York: Amereon, Ltd., 1974.
Werkstattfilm, ed. Ein offenes Geheimnis: ‘Arisierung’ in Alltag und Wirtschaft in Oldenburg 1933–1945. Oldenburg: Isensee Verlag, 2001.
Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Index
Abitur, 52
Abramovicz, Zofia Grochowalska, 303
Adler, Rudolf, 244
Adorno, Theodor, 314
Agde concentration camp
Alex and Helmut leaving Montauban for, 189
Alex’s letter requesting liberation from, 204–207
author’s research on relatives in, 10
internment of Jews and other refugees, 201–203
living conditions, 203–204
memorial to people interned in, 208–209
status report by camp commandant, 207
Agency for the Rescue of Children (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, OSE), 138
Aix-en-Provence, 238
Aldenburg, 35. See also Oldenburg
Alexander, Harry, 241, 244
Algerian war, 192, 223
Altes Gymnasium Oldenburg (AGO), 50–54, 58–59, 67–68, 316
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint)
editorial on success of, 125–126
finding asylum for St. Louis passengers, 114–118
overseeing transfer of St. Louis passengers, 118–122
on suspension of exit visas for Jews (1942), 263
unresolved controversy regarding, 125–126
“Angel of Death,” reference to Josef Mengele, 289–290
anti-Semitism
in France, 150–153, 208
history of Montauban and, 191–192
Nazi Party encouraging, 92
St. Louis voyage and, 94–95
of Vichy government, 184–186
Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC), 171–172
Arisierung, 46
Arum, 131–132
Aryanization
of Jewish enterprises, 58–60
national violence and, 55–56
rise of Nazi Party, 46–47
of schools, 58–59
Auschwitz
author and wife’s visit to, 299–302
deportation of Jews from Drancy camp to, 277
erasing sins of, 304
feelings of guilt about inability to save relatives, 308
Final Solution to Jewish Problem, 290
founding of camp, 287–288
in list of extermination camps, 291
living conditions, 288–289
murder of Gerda Philippsohn, 29
Nazi cover-up before Soviet advance, 295–296
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, 299
Auvergne, 171, 173
Bach, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 16
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 283–285, 304–305
Baker, Janet, 304
Banquet of Nations, The, 267
Baranowski, Hermann, 57
Bar-le-Duc, 144–145
Bayer chemical, drug testing on camp inmates, 289
Beaudouin, Eugène, 275–276
Beckman, Theodor, 27–28
Behrens, Elkan Simon, 166, 309, 313
Behrens, Helen (wife of author’s cousin), 312–313, 315–324
Behrens, Johanna, 225
Behrens, Ludwig, 309, 313
Behrens, Steven (author’s cousin), 165–169, 309–313, 315–324
Behrens, Toni. See Goldschmidt, Toni (grandmother)
Belzec, in list of extermination camps, 291
Berenson, Lawrence, 125, 127
Bibliothèque Municipale, Boulogne, 133–134, 138–142
Birkenau (Auschwitz II), 291, 294–297, 302–303
Biscuits Poult, 188–189, 196–197
Black Death, 213
Black Thursday (Jeudi noir), 263
Blanksma, Tjitse, 132
Blitzkrieg, 181
Blum, Leon, 154, 183
Bohny-Reiter, Friedel, 230
Borah, William, 180
Boschen, Elsa, 40
Boulez, Pierre, 171
Boulogne-sur-Mer
arrival of Jewish refugees from St. Louis, 134–138
author’s journey and arrival in, 130–134
author’s research in, 138–142
Bibliothèque Municipale, 133–134, 138–142
Bousquet, René, 187–190, 202, 264, 307
Boyer, Odette, 265
Boyken, Annemarie, 34–35
Brahms, Johann, 61, 88–89
Breger, Lotte, 226
Breitman, Richard, 127–128
Bremen, 74–75
Bremer-Vulkan Shipyards, 77
Brzezinka extermination camp, 292
Buch, Friedrich, 83
Buchenwald concentration camp, 82, 287
Bückeburg, Germany, 16–17, 307
Buschmann, Georg, 21–22, 27
Bussières, Amédeé, 117
C. H. Kori, 294
Camp d’Agde. See Agde, concentration camp
Camp de Rivesaltes. See Rivesaltes, concentration camp
Camp des Milles. See Les Milles, concentration camp
Camp du Martinet, 166–167
Campra, André, 175
Camus, Albert, 198
Canal du Midi, 201
Cantaloube, Joseph, 171
Carcassonne, 199
Carl von Ossietzky University, 32–33
Casals, Pablo, 216–217
Cassin, René, 208
Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Boulogne, 133
Catlin, George, 174
cemeteries, vandalized by Nazis, 314
cemetery, at Sachsenhagen, 19, 21–22, 25–27, 30–31
Central Office for Jewish Emigration, 77–78
Central Refugee Committee of Paris, 116–117, 155
Centre National de Rassemblement de Israélites (National Center for the Gathering of Jews), 221–222, 264
Cezanne, Paul, 152, 237
Chambon-sur-Lac, 171–172
Château de Vincennes, 272–273
Chaumont, 272
Chelmo extermination camp, 291
City of Light. See Paris
Civil Service Law (1933), 290
Clauberg, Dr. Carl, 289
Claudius, 133
Coast Guard, and St. Louis, 106, 128
Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés (CAR), 117, 135, 155
Contrexéville, 145, 162, 271–272
Côte d’Azure, 213
Cousi, G. R. (painter), 180
crematoriums, 292–294, 302
Crystal Night. See Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
Cuba, 79–82, 127
cyanide, use in extermination camps, 293–294
Czechoslovakia, Munich Agreement and, 202
da Vinci, Leonardo, 180
Dachau concentration camp, 287, 294
Daladier-Marchandeau ordinance of 1939, 185
Dali, Salvador, 214
Daumas, Eugène, 194
Dauphin, Irene, 207
de Gaulle, Charles, 171
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 149–150
Decree 937, 98
Degas, Edgar, 152
DeLaunay, David, 175–177
délit d’opinion (felony of thought), 183
Delmenhorst, 75
Der Judenstaat (Herzl), 152
Devil in France, The (Feuchtwanger), 240, 244
Devil’s Island, 151
Dobrowolski, Antoni, 296
Dona nobis pacem (Bach), 305
Drancy camp, 265, 268, 275–279, 297
Dreyfus, Alfred, 151–153
Drouilhet, Jean-Claude and Monique, 10–11, 173–178, 191–198
Drumont, Edouard, 150–151
Duborg, Louis William Valentine, 177
Edison, Thomas, 24
Eichmann, Adolf, 291
Eilers-Dörfler, Germaid, 317
Eisenach, 283–285
Eisfeld, Theodore, 77
End of the Trail (Fraser), 193
Ernst, Max, 244–245, 266
Esterhazy, Ferdinand Walsin, 151
ethnic cleansing, Hitler’s ethnic goals, 287
Eus, 235
euthanasia campaign, of National Socialists, 69
Evian Conference, 79
extermination camps, 190, 277, 291
FDR and the Jews (Breitman and Lichtman), 127–128
felony of thought (délit d’opinion), 183
Feuchtwanger, Lion, 240, 244
Final Solution, 290–291, 293
Flossenbürg concentration camp, 287
Fondation du Camp Des Milles, 265
food/water. See living conditions
Forster, E. M., 24
France
anti-Semitism in, 150–153
contemporary anti-Semitism, 208
history of Jews in, 149–150
Jewish refugees and, 153–156
journey of Alex and Helmut to locations in, 165–169
St. Louis refugees accepted by, 116–120
St. Louis refugees disembark in, 134–138
St. Louis refugees sail to, 122–124
Vichy government. See Vichy government
Franco, Franciso, 201
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, 150
Fraser, James Earle, 193
French Revolution, 149–150, 179, 191
Gartenstrasse, 61, 64–65, 70–73, 310, 313–316, 319, 322–324
gas chambers, 292–295, 297
Gerda Philippsohn School, 29–30
Gestapo
arrest and imprisonment of Bishop Théas, 191
arrest and internment of Antoni Dobrowolski, 296
death sentences at Auschwitz, 298
quality of life in Nazi Germany, 137
role in extracting refugees from internment camps in Unoccupied Zone, 182
rounding up Jews in Sachsenhagen, 28
seizure of Captain Buch of St. Louis, 83
surveillance and death of Carl von Ossietsky, 33
Wannsee Conference and, 290–291
Gineste, Marie-Rose, 190–191
Goebbels, Joseph, 56, 78
Goldschmidt, Alex (grandfather)
anti-Jewish forces against, 49
arrest and imprisonment of, 57–60
attempted emigration to Cuba, 79–82
boarding St. Louis, 85–86
at Central Hospital of Contrexéville, 271–272
characteristics of, 34–35
early life of, 24–25
execution in gas chambers at Birkenau in 1942, 297
hardships of, 2–3
Haus der Mode, 41
at Hotel International agricultural center, 160–162
internment at Agde, 202–207
internment at Camp des Milles, 245
internment at Drancy, 277
internment at Montauban, 188–189, 192–194
internment at Rivesaltes, 223–229
letter from Camp du Martinet (1940), 166–169
letters from Camp des Milles, 247–248, 251–253, 256–257, 261–262
Mantelhaus Goldschmidt, 42–44
marriage, children, and home of, 36–41
memorial service in Oldenburg, 316–324
name on Wall of Names at Shoah Museum, 274
National Socialist German Workers’ Party and, 44–45
plea for help, 269
release from prison, 79
sale of home forced by Nazis, 46
son’s failure to save, 3–4
as victim of deportation policy, 264–265
Goldschmidt, Bertha (aunt), 37, 49, 319
Goldschmidt, Carl (uncle), 25
Goldschmidt, Eva (aunt), 40, 49, 51, 65–66, 319
Goldschmidt, Günther Ludwig. See Goldsmith, George Gunther (father)
Goldschmidt, Johanna (great-great-grandmother), 20–22
Goldschmidt, Klaus Helmut (uncle), 305, 307
arrest of, 56–57
attempted emigration to Cuba, 80–82
author’s visit to Helmut’s school, 67–68
author’s research on story of, 8–10
birth of, 40
Alex's Wake Page 36
