Although we children were never told what went on, we sensed that there was something in the air by the mysterious disappearance of several additional teachers. Those who remained outdid one another in demonstrating their zeal for Hitler in hopes of saving their jobs. Not a day went by without our teachers making derogatory references to Jews, and since—to my knowledge—we had no Jewish schoolmates with whom we could have formed friendships, we easily believed the scurrilous propaganda. “Had it not been for the Jews,” insisted Herr Grimmelshäuser, “Germany could have easily won the World War.” Herr Grimmelshäuser, a tall, gangling man with dark wavy hair and black horn-rimmed glasses, was leading up to explaining the “stab in the back” notion that had been widely accepted by Germans as the real reason for Germany’s massive defeat in World War I. According to Herr Grimmelshäuser’s version, Jews spread lies among the German civilian population about German military setbacks and defeats until they had convinced the people that any further war efforts were futile. Thus deprived of the people’s moral and material backing, the up-to-that-point victorious German troops collapsed—beaten not in combat, but by a treacherous, Jewish-engineered “stab in the back” at home.
Herr Grimmelshäuser delighted in reading to us articles from Der Stürmer (The Stormer), Der Völkische Beobachter (The People’s Observer), and Der Angriff (The Attack), three prominent Nazi Party newspapers, which were chock-full of Jew-baiting articles. A typical Nazi “news story” would report the eviction at Christmastime of a fine German family by a Scrooge-like Jewish landlord because they had fallen behind in their rent payments due to the father’s illness. Such journalistic gems read to us by Grimmelshäuser had the cumulative effect of making us children dislike Jews from the bottom of our innocent little hearts. But much worse was yet to come. One day, Herr Grimmelshäuser announced that we were to view an important film that, he promised, would give us a far better idea of what Jews were really like than he could. The short film depicted Jews as deceitful, gesticulating, morally and physically unclean beings. It was a much milder version of the “documentary” entitled The Eternal Jew that hit the screens a few years later and has been rated as the most vicious anti-Semitic propaganda film ever conceived. It purported to show Jews in an overcrowded ghetto, scurrying about furtively in their various disreputable pursuits. Next, the camera switched to a colony of loathsome-looking rats, scurrying about furtively, like the Jews, in their beastly scavenging. To make sure that the point was not lost on the audience, the announcer explained that Jews, like rats, constituted Ungeziefer (vermin) that spread diseases and caused plagues, and therefore had to be excised from society if society was to regain its health.
Both films left deep impressions on us kids. Weeks after the screening of the first film, we would still shudder with disgust at the thought of coming into physical contact with Jews, whom we now viewed as physically repulsive, morally corrupt, cowardly, blatantly dishonest, intellectually mediocre, but extremely cunning—and, therefore, extremely dangerous—creatures. Jews’ avowed objective, we were made to believe, was the total destruction of the noble race of German people and their noble culture. This, we were told, Jews tried to accomplish either by trickery or violence or, if that didn’t work, by defiling noble Aryan blood by mixing it with their own inferior blood.
“Why don’t the police arrest them and put them in jail?” one of my classmates demanded to know after one of Herr Grimmelshäuser’s anti-Jewish lectures.
“Just be patient, my boy,” Herr Grimmelshäuser counseled the outraged boy. “I’m sure that in due time the Führer will come up with a solution.”
HITLER STRIKES HOME
Usually my mother came home from work looking cheerful, ready to spend another pleasant evening with me. But one night, instead of greeting me with her customary smile, she seemed on the verge of tears. When I asked her what was wrong, she blurted the devastating news that she had been fired from her job.
While I couldn’t fully grasp the enormity of the impact of her dismissal on our economic well-being, I found it impossible to imagine her no longer being a part of the hospital. The Krankenhaus had been the center not only of my mother’s professional life but of her—no, our—social life. All of her closest friends were hospital coworkers whose children were my playmates and friends, and most of our outings involved them.
To spare my feelings, my mother carefully avoided letting me know that her firing was in any way related to me. Instead, she offered a vague explanation about having been let go as part of a sweeping reduction of hospital staff. Actually, she lost her job as a result of a new Nazi policy that barred Jews and other “politically unreliable persons” from government employment. It wasn’t until many years later that Mutti told me the real reason for her dismissal—the fact that she had conceived a child by an African—and some of the details of the ordeal she suffered while fighting to keep her job.
The politically and racially motivated purges, which were carried out nationwide throughout governmental agencies and facilities, amounted to a massive shake-up of the entire St. Georg Hospital staff, from the lowest manual laborers to the highest-level medical professionals. Anyone unable to produce a clean bill of “racial health” was forced to leave. My mother’s immediate superior, a male head nurse by the name of Craemeyer, had for years bragged about his Jewish ancestry. When the hospital administration ran a racial background check on him, he squeaked by, but just barely, thanks to the fact that his last recorded Jewish ancestor had been born before the Nazis’ crucial turn-of-the-century cutoff date. After that, Herr Craemeyer never mentioned his Jewish ancestors again.
Immediately after being fired, as Mutti years later recounted to me, she went up the hospital administration chain of command to plead with various officials for a rescinding of the dismissal order. Each told her the same thing, that the order was irrevocable and that absolutely nothing could be done. Finally, she requested in writing, and was granted, an appointment with one of the hospital’s higher-ups. When, on the morning of the appointment, she followed a receptionist into the administrator’s spacious office, my mother was in for a huge surprise. Seated behind a giant desk was a short, squat man in a brown Nazi uniform. She immediately recognized him as someone who had until recently worked in the hospital’s laundry and whose obnoxious sexual passes she had on several occasions turned down. Like so many Nazi functionaries of that period, he had obviously been rewarded for his political activities with an instant promotion to a high-level job.
Jumping to his feet, he greeted my mother effusively, as if they had always been the closest of friends. “Come in, Bertha. Have a seat. It’s so good to see you again. Now what can I do for you?”
When she had sufficiently recovered from her initial shock, she told him that, in spite of the fact that she had never been politically active, she had been let go “for political reasons.” She also explained how she had appealed to anyone she could think of who might be able to help, but to no avail.
“You’ve come to the right person. Your case is not nearly as hopeless as it seems,” he responded encouragingly after hearing her out. “I am positive that I can arrange for you to get your job back,” he added with an encouraging smile. “You do understand, however, that I can’t go out on a limb for a person with your—let’s say—past without you showing me some cooperation. Eine Hand wäscht die Andere. (One hand washes the other).”
When my mother, who was beginning to smell a rat about the size of the administrator, demanded to know what he had in mind by “cooperation,” the squat man suddenly dropped his pleasant mask. “Let’s not try to play the naive one,” he fumed. “You know exactly what I am talking about.”
At this point my mother had heard enough and prepared to leave the office, but like an enraged pit bull, the administrator threw himself between her and the door, and before she could fully comprehend what was happening, slapped her several times hard across the face. “A woman like you ought to be grateful that a German man sti
ll wants to have anything to do with her,” he shouted. “Now get out and don’t you ever let me see you again.”
Later, my mother shared this experience with some of her close friends and told them of her determination to pursue the matter in court. They strongly counseled her against taking legal steps by pointing out that suing the Nazi official was tantamount to suing the government, an absurdity under the present regime. They warned her that this would only call unwanted attention to her situation and could result in bringing the full brunt of the Nazi regime down upon us. “You’re in a no-win situation,” they told her, “and if you know what’s good for you and your boy, you’ll forget the whole thing.” Reluctantly, but no doubt wisely, my mother took their advice.
MY FRIEND KLAUS
Having been brought up by a widowed mother who had reared nine children by her own hard labor, my mother found it unthinkable to apply for welfare aid. To tide us over until she was able to find another job, she gladly accepted housecleaning work from several former colleagues at the hospital who had heard of her plight and wanted to help. One of them was a Jewish doctor who had himself been fired from his position during an earlier Nazi purge. He was still allowed to maintain his private practice, but was restricted to the treatment of non-Aryans.
He, his wife, and their seven-year-old son, Klaus, lived in a large, luxurious apartment on Grindelalle, a main thoroughfare that led through Hamburg’s upper-middle-class, predominantly Jewish community. Although my mother was now their once-a-week cleaning woman, her new employers regarded her primarily as a friend and encouraged her to visit them after work and on weekends, and to bring me along as well. As a result, Klaus and I became good friends.
One day, as my mother and I were on our way to her cleaning job, we noticed groups of SA and SS troopers lining the downtown streets. Many of them were carrying signs that read DEUTSCHE, KAUFT NICHT BEI JUDEN (Germans, do not buy from Jews). Inspired by the signs, I confided to my mother that I, too, hated Jews because my teachers had taught us that Jews were repulsive. My mother looked at me for a long time with sad eyes, and finally asked me whether I liked Klaus. I couldn’t see what Klaus had to do with my dislike of Jews but told her that I liked Klaus a lot. Still scrutinizing me with that sad look, my mother said, “Klaus is a Jew, and so are his father and mother.”
I was stunned. How could my dear friend Klaus or his kind parents be the despicable people I had seen in the movie? All of a sudden, nothing seemed to make sense to me anymore.
When my mother saw my confusion, she tried to reassure me. “The only thing that’s different about Jews is that they go to a different church, which is called a synagogue,” she explained, “but that doesn’t make them bad people. The Nazis don’t like Africans either, and they are just as wrong about Jews as they are about Africans.”
“But why don’t the Nazis like Africans and Jews?” I kept probing.
“Because the Nazis feel they are better than everybody else,” she explained. “They believe that all non-Nordic people, particularly Jews, are inferior. Unfortunately, they’re in charge and there is nothing we can do about it.”
“Does the Führer believe the same thing?” I demanded to know.
“I’m sure he does,” replied my mother, obviously uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.
I could accept, with some reservations, that there might be a few bad people in the government, but to believe that Hitler, the man whom I had been taught to worship as Germany’s savior, should be capable of even the slightest mean act was beyond my comprehension.
My mother, noticing my inner turmoil, cautioned me never to talk to anyone about what she had just told me lest both of us get into serious trouble. I gave her my Ehrenwort (word of honor) and sealed my promise with a solemn handshake. German boys, it had been drilled into me from as far back as I could remember, never break their Ehrenwort, no matter what. My mother took another long, serious look at me that told me she knew her secret was safe with me.
When we arrived at our destination, Klaus’s father opened the door. “Did you see those Dreckschweine (dirty pigs) out there, Bertha?” he asked my mother, with obvious reference to the placard-carrying storm troopers. While he, his wife, and my mother talked in hushed tones in the living room, Klaus and I went into his room, where we were soon engrossed in our favorite pastime of arranging his toy soldiers into marching formations in preparation for war. That evening, I said goodbye to Klaus as usual and promised to return the following week. But a week later my mother told me that we wouldn’t be returning after all, because Klaus’s father had accepted a staff appointment from another hospital and the family had moved to Berlin. What my mother kept from me at the time in order not to frighten me was that Klaus’s parents had advised her to discontinue her contact with them. They had explained that, like all German Jews, they were under close scrutiny by the much feared Geheime Staatspolizei—the Gestapo—and that by associating with Jews, she ran the risk of making our already precarious situation even worse. They also told her that at one time they had intended to leave Germany but now thought they had waited too long and let the opportunity pass.
I didn’t hear any more about Klaus and his parents until several years later, after the infamous Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938. That was the night of the Nazis’ first major nationwide terror attack on German Jews, during which practically all synagogues were destroyed, including 267 prominent temples, but that number rose to more than one thousand if one includes smaller, unofficial places of worship; more than seven thousand shops were plundered; ninety-one Jews were killed and some thirty thousand Jews were arrested. The government ordered this pogrom, which derived its name from the massive destruction of store windows that left the sidewalks covered with broken glass, in retaliation for the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst von Rath in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth named Herschel Grynszpan. Kristallnacht also coincided with the fifteenth anniversary of the Nazis’ ill-fated 1923 putsch in Munich, during which eighteen Nazis were killed.
After school, following the widely reported terror attacks of the previous night, I took a stroll with several of my classmates through Hamburger Strasse, Barmbek’s main shopping artery, to see for ourselves the damage we had heard so much about. The reports had not been exaggerated. Sidewalks on both sides of the major thoroughfare were covered for miles with broken glass. All of the windowless stores, we were told, belonged to Jews. “Had you been here last night,” one boy boasted, “you could have ‘bought’ anything you wanted without money.” I could readily see what he meant, for the shop windows that were normally filled with merchandise were completely bare, as were the shelves inside the stores. Several of my classmates expressed satisfaction that the Jews were finally getting their well-deserved punishment for all the wicked things they had done to Germany. I wanted to tell them that not all Jews were wicked, but remembered that I had promised my mother never to talk about that.
By the time I arrived home, I found my mother crying. When I asked her what was the matter, she confessed to me that the story she had told me years before about Klaus and his parents leaving Hamburg was not true, and that she had just heard that all three had been found dead in their apartment, the apparent victims of a drug overdose administered by the doctor. It took my mother many months to recover from her grief. But for me, the idea of death was still too abstract to have any real meaning. To this day, I can still see Klaus standing at the door as I told him I would see him again next week.
TANTE FATIMA
A periodic but unavoidable embarrassment, as far as I was concerned, were the occasional visits of my Tante Fatima, my father’s oldest sister, who had returned from Switzerland to complete her studies for her Abitur (high school diploma) at the Helen Lange Oberrealschule. A petite woman in her early twenties, she was, by anyone’s account—including her own—a genius who was conversant in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and her native Vai. In addition, s
he was a whiz at math, chemistry, and biology and played the violin well enough to give recitals despite a badly crippled right hand.
The reason Tante Fatima’s visits got on my last raw nerve was not that I disliked her, but that we two had diametrically opposed agendas. My constant endeavor was to remain as inconspicuous as possible in order to avoid unnecessary attention or humiliating ridicule. Tante Fatima, on the other hand, loved nothing more than being the center of attention, and deliberately dressed and acted in a way that made it impossible for her to be overlooked. Long before I made the discovery that black was beautiful, she wore an Afro so huge it would have aroused the envy of a Fiji Islander. And to make doubly sure that she was noticed, just in case her enormous Afro failed to do the trick, she never went anywhere without her well-worn bright yellow leopard-skin coat, a most unusual piece of clothing in my staunchly provincial neighborhood. Each time Tante Fatima came around, she insisted on taking me out to some nearby Konditorei for a pastry and whipped cream treat. Invariably, our appearance would trigger stares, giggles, and insulting Neger remarks that made me wish the earth would open up and swallow me. Neither of us was amused when at one Konditorei the waitress snidely suggested that we try some of the establishment’s delicious Negerküsse (Negro kisses) or Mohrenkopfe (Moors’ heads), two popular chocolate-coated pastries.
It irked me beyond words when people assumed that Fatima was my mother. More than once I had to fight some of my cronies who, after seeing me with Fatima, insisted that she was my real mother since we looked so much alike, and that the white woman I called my mother had merely adopted me. The latter idea was particularly annoying to me since, when I was much smaller, I entertained the same suspicion until my mother convinced me, by pointing out some examples in the animal kingdom, that mothers with white skin could have babies with brown skin as long as the father had dark skin.
Destined to Witness Page 8
