Epilogue

Ingelore arrived in the United States on 28 October 1946. Reminiscing many decades later, she related that her voyage from Japan to America aboard the Marine Falcon was memorable. At the outset she relished the excitement of finally “going home” and she remembered sailing across the Pacific toward a vivid sunrise every day.

The trip was dampened by the fact she was confined to the infirmary. While convalescing there she forged a close camaraderie with the ship’s Navy nurse, a woman named Pat, who had taken very good care of her. A few hours after the Falcon put into port in Seattle a physician, who was a colleague of Dr. Hoke, removed her cast. Ingelore recalled that the doctor’s office was in a tall building that overlooked the beautiful Seattle harbour. While there her father quickly fell in love with the city and he vowed to return for a visit someday and perhaps to settle in the area. This was not to be.

After the cast was removed Ingelore was given a pair of crutches with strict instructions not to walk without them. She was still in a great deal of pain. And even with her crutches she could not walk! She was very weak and for quite some time she suffered from lightheadedness and vertigo as well as nausea whenever she stood—the result of having been bedridden for so long.

From Seattle, Kurt, Doris, and Ingelore travelled east across the United States by train, arriving in New York City five days later. The trip was taxing for Ingelore, both physically and emotionally. She found it difficult and uncomfortable to sit on the swaying train and standing with crutches was too painful and precarious. For most of the trip, Paps and Mutsch took turns describing the landscapes to her. Eventually, she adapted to the crutches and the pain subsided. She bragged that after a while she was able to run with her crutches! After seeing some of the scenery for herself, she promised to explore the entirety of America someday, from north to south and from east to west. Many years later, travelling extensively with her husband after retirement, she did.

Clockwise from top left: Harold (front, centre) with his flight crew in Corsica, 1944; Ingelore, on her wedding day, with Doris and a bridesmaid, 19 October 1947; Ingelore in front of the Brandenburg Gates, 1989; Harold, Ingelore, Doris, and Kurt at Ingelore’s wedding, two years before Kurt’s death.

Once they reached New York City Ingelore’s greatest concern was for her father’s condition. His headaches, once intermittent, now were constant and much more severe. They settled in Flushing, Queens, New York, and soon after Mutsch made arrangements for her husband to undergo tests at a New York City hospital. The diagnosis presented earlier in Japan was confirmed. Kurt had a cancerous brain tumour. The prognosis was grim.

Ingelore never forgave herself for the jeep accident. She believed that her three-month convalescence in Japan not only had delayed Kurt’s medical treatment but also had allowed the tumour time to grow. The doctors assured her that her father’s cancer most likely began to develop when he was a teenager and that the slight delay in their travel was not related to the seriousness of his present condition. Nevertheless feelings of guilt tortured her for most of her life. ”Had it not been for my foolhardiness,” she often would lament, “then perhaps something could have been done sooner to save my father’s life.”

An operation was scheduled to remove Kurt’s tumour. By a strange coincidence, one of the attendants on the hospital floor was the Falcon’s nurse, Pat. She had been discharged from the Navy and had gone to live with relatives in Manhattan. Ingelore called Pat an “angel incarnate” since she had taken care of her on the Falcon and now was tending to Kurt in the hospital. As Kurt had told his young daughter a long time ago, there is so much good in so many people.

Kurt’s operation left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak and think clearly. After months of physical therapy and with the aid of a leg brace, he was able to walk slowly but not without great pain. Ingelore was amazed at her father’s almost superhuman determination. Despite his challenges, he taught himself to use his left hand to write and do other daily tasks.

From the moment Kurt left the hospital, Doris devoted herself to helping her husband live as normal a life as possible. Every day, no matter what the weather, she succeeded in getting him down a flight of stairs and out for a walk, at first in a wheelchair and later with the aid of a cane. Doris exercised his limbs, massaged his sore legs, fed him the most nourishing meals she could concoct, and supported him in his quest to get well. Nothing was too much for her.

When he was unable to squeeze a little rubber ball with his right hand, an exercise prescribed by his therapist, or when he had trouble recalling a word, he would often lose his temper. But Doris always remained calm. Ingelore recalled an incident when in the grips of frustration, her father lost control. He tried to throw a chair at Doris but Ingelore wrested it away from him at the last moment. When he calmed down, he burst into tears. Ingelore heard him say, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” Doris, caressing his wrist, replied, “It’s all right, dearest, you’ll soon be better.”

Of the many people who helped the Rothschilds prepare to leave Berlin until their arrival in America, George Griesbach certainly was their most committed benefactor. As one of the three founders of the J. Gerber Company, George had hired a young Kurt at the Berlin office, Kurt’s first meaningful employment. Later, Griesbach’s connections and his altruism provided Kurt and his family not only the opportunity to leave Germany safely but also a new position in the Kobe office in Japan. According to the Marine Falcon’s manifest, Griesbach paid for the family’s transport. Once in America, Kurt again worked for the company in New York City.

After Kurt’s operation, even though he was never the same, Griesbach provided employment, keeping a place for Kurt at the office for those days when he felt well enough to work.

Not long after the surgery, Kurt suffered a debilitating stroke and his ability to continue in his position was irreversibly compromised. Yet again Griesbach came to his aid, giving Kurt a monthly salary. This went on for years. And when Kurt died in December 1949, it was George who continued to help support Mutsch.

From the time she left Japan, Ingelore and Harold Grossinger never lost touch, managing to maintain contact via letters. Although his dream was to remain in Japan, Grossinger returned to America sometime after his discharge and settled in the New York City area. They rekindled their friendship. Eventually, Harold Grossinger did marry, and he and his wife Faye would often visit Ingelore and her family in Ossining.

Ironically, the love of Ingelore’s life was named Harold but it was not Harold Grossinger. Harold Stahl was a friend of Grossinger’s and a veteran as well so both had much in common. Harold Stahl served in Europe with the 1st Emergency Rescue Squadron. Its mission was to patrol the seas and rescue downed Allied pilots. Based in Ajaccio, Corsica, he flew more than a dozen missions over the Ligurian Sea off the coast of Genoa, Italy, which at the time remained occupied by the Nazis.

The encounter between Ingelore, a twenty-two-year-old German immigrant, and Harold, a US Army Air Force veteran, was casual but auspicious. Something clicked and Ingelore Rothschild and Harold Stahl were married on 19 October 1947.

Word never came from Berlin. After Ingelore reluctantly accepted that many of her relatives and friends had been corralled by the Nazis or had perished during the Allied bombing raids of her birth city, she silently grieved for many years. She never learned that her paternal grandparents, Leopold and Hedwig Rothschild, died at Auschwitz. She felt a tremendous sense of loss for the friends and acquaintances of whom she was most fond, notably Gerta Klaus, Katya, Frau Beck, Herr Bayern, Inga Goldman, and Adah Metzger—their whereabouts unknown.

From the moment Ingelore arrived in Japan in 1936, at the age of twelve, she swore she never again would set foot on German soil. She kept that vow for over half a century. But in 1989, she and Harold went to Berlin to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of her Uncle Hans, Kurt’s brother. She cherished her reunion with him for the rest of her life.

While living in Flushing, Harold Stahl worked in New York City in the garment industry. He was very successful. In November 1949 they were blessed with a daughter. The family moved to Bayside where a son was born in April 1953. The family moved again in 1957 to Lee Avenue in Ossining, in Westchester County, New York.

Uncle Sieke often visited his niece and her family at their Lee Avenue home. Ingelore’s daughter, Darilyn, vividly recalls one visit in particular. She remembers Sieke seated across from her in the backyard of her childhood home on a warm summer’s day, his short-sleeved shirt revealing to the young girl, for the first time, the blue numbers tattooed on his forearm. It was a startling symbol of his suffering and a reminder of the persecution the family had faced not so long ago.

Ingelore and Harold would often visit Uncle Hans and Aunt Evchen, the Mendelsohns. They lived in a beautiful home in Peekskill, New York. Their yard displayed magnificent gardens in the Japanese style complete with an assortment of orchids and a waterfall. The Mendelsohns never did have children and their affection for Ingelore never waned.

Many years later the Stahl family relocated to an area in Ossining called Stillwater Lake. Their home was also decorated in the Japanese style.

Harold Stahl died on Wednesday 1 June 2006 of an intestinal aneurysm. He and Ingelore had been married fifty-eight years.

Ingelore Erna Rothschild Stahl, failing to thrive, died precisely thirteen weeks to the day after her husband on Wednesday 31 August 2006. She was eighty-two years old.