Conditions Worsen

1933–35

One Sunday, Paps, Mutsch, and I went to the Wannsee for a picnic and a leisurely walk about the shoreline and along the trails that weaved through groupings of flowers and trees. We spent many summer Sundays on that beautiful lake on the outskirts of Berlin.

Paps had a compartment in an outbuilding near one of the docks where we kept our kayak. Handmade of richly veined mahogany, as sleek and as smooth as Mutsch’s silk blouses, the boat was perfectly balanced and rode low enough for me to trail my fingers in the water. After each outing we would clean the kayak until we could see our reflection in its sides. It was just the right size for the three of us: Paps in the stern, Mutsch in the middle, and me, a skinny, leggy nine-year-old, neatly wedged into the bow.

Mist was rising off the lake that day as my parents edged our kayak into the water, compelling a mother goose and her goslings to change direction. We watched birds fly through the air and fish nip at insects on the water’s surface. In the distance we saw a small beach area. We could barely make out people settling themselves with blankets and chairs.

It was a pleasure to glide through the still water and enjoy the lush scenery and fascinating wildlife. We explored numerous inlets and coves. Then we rowed ashore to land the kayak for an hour or so while we swam in the clear water. We picnicked under the willows growing along the shore.

I said, “It’s such a lovely day, please let’s stay late!”

My parents smiled. I never wanted those Sundays to end especially since only recently I had learned how to paddle without drenching us.

“All right,” they agreed, “we’ll stay!”

After lunch Mutsch and I climbed into the kayak. Paps pushed us adrift until he was thigh-high in the shallows. He jumped into the boat causing it to rock from side to side. For a moment we thought we would founder but Paps quickly steadied it as he settled into the stern.

As we were snaking our way about the lake I reclined in the bow facing aft, my legs tucked in at the sides of the boat so as not to press against Mutsch, watching her amidships and my father in the stern. As they rowed, Paps to his left and mother to her right, they swayed like pendulums, their faces crossing back and forth as they switched oars from port to starboard and back again.

Suddenly they stopped rowing, the kayak gliding silently.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, seeing the looks of astonishment on their faces.

Paps said to Mutsch, “Dreh dich um.” Then he said to me, “Turn around!”

They put their oars in the water on the same side to turn the boat around. Paps saying again, “Dreh dich um!” This time there was more urgency in his voice.

“Yes,” I said. As the boat continued to swing around I caught a glimpse of something I’d never seen before. We were near the beach area we had seen in the distance earlier that day but we were now much closer. On the shore there were about two dozen men and women. They were naked! Every one of them!

My parents rowed feverishly, the boat racing away from the shore, our backs to the naked people.

“It’s time to go,” Mutsch said.

The sun was beginning to disappear behind some clouds. Few boats remained on the lake. My parents paddled slowly not wanting to disturb the peace and quiet. Along the shoreline willow branches drooped into the lake. Not even a breeze ruffled their leaves. It was so tranquil, the fish asleep, the fowl off to their nests, the air unmoving, the water like glass.

Suddenly sharp cracking sounds shattered the stillness— ricocheting across the lake scaring the geese into the air.

“What’s that?” I screamed.

Paps steadied the boat. He turned this way and that, his ears perked, his eyes searching the shoreline.

“Hush, Lorechen! We’re going home!”

While I crouched in the hollow of the bow he and Mutsch paddled furiously toward the shore. They glanced at one another and then at me. When we came ashore Paps moved quickly, pulling the kayak out of the water and returning the boat to the outbuilding without the ritual cleaning.

In the kitchen that evening my parents said hunting was forbidden at the lake so someone must have been shooting unlawfully.

“Will they be punished?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m sure they will be,” father said.

He turned to me with a shrug. It was then I noticed that the right side of his face was drooped and his right eye was halfway closed. His head tilted. He was clamping his teeth. He looked away and then went to the library.

“Is he all right?” I asked Mutsch.

“Yes, Lorechen. Another headache is coming on. He’ll be fine.”

Later, from my bedroom, I overheard snippets of a telephone conversation between Paps and one of his brothers. I sidled out of bed and pressed myself up against my door to listen.

I heard Paps say, “I’m afraid the rampage has started, Alfred. We were on the lake today. Some of the moderates from the Bundestag¹⁴ live near there. It was terrifying to hear those rifle shots. I wonder if the Nazis have begun their assassinations.”

I wandered into the hallway.

“What do you mean? What are the moderates and who are the assassins?”

Paps was startled by my presence.

Dismissing my concern, he chirped, “Off to bed with you. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

He handed the telephone receiver to Mutsch. With a leading hand he escorted me to my room and tucked me into bed.

Over the next few days, conversations between my father and mother stopped abruptly when I came into the room. Something was in the air. I wondered if the assassins from the lake were loose in Wilmersdorf.

About two weeks later I was witness to angry words exchanged among Paps and two of his brothers.

“Go to Holland?” Paps asked in disbelief, the veins in his neck bulging. “It’d be just as dangerous for you to stay here! Do you believe Hitler will respect borders once he carries out his Lebensraum policy? No, he’ll overtake demarcation lines without conscience!”¹⁵

My cousin Ullie and her parents lived in Amsterdam.¹⁶ What was so wrong with planning a trip there as Uncle Alfred and Uncle Hans were suggesting, I wondered?

I knew that many of my friends and their families were thinking of leaving Berlin. I thought it was because of what Paps had told me about Europe and America, that things were very bad there too, not just in Germany. When he said there weren’t very many jobs what he really meant was that staggering unemployment was the reason for an abysmal lack of opportunities for families to provide for themselves. When he said that people didn’t have much money for food or clothing he meant that the Depression had caused a precipitous fall in the value of all European currencies in tandem with a meteoric increase in the prices of goods and services. When he said there were rising tides of dislike for the Jews he meant that the Nazi-driven cancerous plague of anti-Semitism was rampant in Germany.

Although my father protected me from most of the frightening developments in Germany, in 1933 when Hitler was sworn in as chancellor I can still remember Paps telling me, “An evil man has come to power in Germany. He and the Nazis will destroy all that is decent in this world.”

My weekday house detention with Gerta lasted three years. The prevailing climate in Berlin was dismal. I remember many incidents with crystal clarity but others are only vague dream-like recollections.

The last time I had been to school was in May 1932. Gerta had been my teacher ever since, guiding my instruction in various subjects, torturing me with her intense tutorials. Her strictness enabled me to become what my father had hoped I might be one day, “a shining example of a literate, educated, and enlightened young girl.” Father was very proud of me, and Gerta, too. Gerta herself remarked, “You’re smarter than your counterparts still attending school!” How she knew this I don’t know; but, of course, I took her word for it.

Even though the authorities had come looking for me after the incident at the school, Herr Bayern’s story about our move to Munich took weeks to investigate. In the meantime, while the hunt for us ensued, father travelled to the Gerber home office in London. There he arranged with a man named Griesbach, one of the owners, to provide documentation not only for him but also for Mutsch and me. The identification papers we acquired all had the surname Völker. Whether Paps was certified as a German national working in England or we as a family were listed as German expatriates travelling to and fro I don’t recall. Perhaps they were travel visas. At any rate whatever they were, they were all forgeries. Those papers saved our lives.

One night two policemen and a petrified Herr Bayern came to our home. Paps answered the door. Mutsch and I were in the kitchen. Paps later told us Herr Bayern’s face was drained of colour, his eyes steeled with fear, his stubby fingers twitching like the wings of a swarm of locusts.

“Herr Rothschild?” I heard one of the officers demand.

My innards were in knots. I was terrified that I might vomit at any moment.

“No, sir,” Paps calmly responded.

There was an avalanche of tension in the air. The policeman then asked, “Who are you and where are your papers?”

Paps presented him with our lease and our identification documents. After careful review the officer apologized for the inconvenience and then apologized to our landlord. After the officers left Herr Bayern remained a moment longer.

“Herr Rothschild,” he stammered, “how did you . . .”

“It’s fine, Herr Bayern. I acquired the papers in London. They will no longer suspect you and they will have no way of knowing how you helped us. Thank you again for all that you’ve done. You’re safe. We’re safe, too. At least for now.”

Many things changed soon after, one after the other. In April of that year there were boycotts against Jewish storeowners, the banning of Jews from civil service employment, Jewish judges had to resign, and Jewish professors were let go from universities.

Father said, “I’m afraid during this year the last candle will go out.” As it happened he was correct. In August, Paul Von Hindenburg, the president of Germany, died. For my father, this was an especially difficult loss. “It’s been virtually hopeless these past few years,” Paps lamented, “but with his death there’s no hope at all.”

Amid the national turmoil our family also experienced unrest. Paps’ brothers, Alfred, Hans, and Erich, all were taking flight. Yet, Uncle Sieke adamantly refused to close his factory and leave Germany. His stubbornness caused us great worry. A few years later we learned how his sustained ownership of his factory saved his life. Mutsch and Aunt Jenny were trying to convince Omi and Opa to go somewhere safe as well.

It was a horrific time, the days passed slowly in the expanding fog of fear and dread.

Sometime that fall Gerta and I were in the library finishing our lessons for the day. Gerta sat reading aloud from Children’s and Household Tales¹⁷ while I lolled on the carpet looking through a book of famous artists’ works. I was entranced by the reproductions, Gerta’s voice was only a melodic undercurrent in the background.

It was cold that day, the turbulent wind causing leaves to fall at such a rate that we thought the trees, which we could hear scraping against the windows, soon would be bare. The sound of it all was eerily wonderful, the orchestra of autumn trumpeting in full crescendos. Inside it was warm and cozy, my dear Gerta and I sharing a special time together.

Late that afternoon I heard the trap from the mail slot in the front door swing open, then a cascade of letters fall to the floor. Gerta began to rise but I told her I would get the mail.

She said, “All right. Place whatever has come today on the kitchen table.”

I closed my book and walked to the door.

There was a large mound of letters haphazardly sprayed about. I scooped them up and sorted them so that each was facing the same way. I neatened the stack and then fluttered it so the right-hand corners whizzed by, the stamps a colourful montage of shapes and sizes. But something I saw took me aback, jogged my memory. More than five years ago Gerta was with me when I first saw the swastika on the poster near my house, how it appeared to move, rather like a wheel rotating slowly. Two of the letters in the stack bore stamps that showed it. One displayed an eagle, its wings outspread, with its talons grasping a disk containing the swastika. The other, a bright red colour, showed an eagle in flight with the swastika as the sun or moon visible from behind the far horizon.

A stamp, much like the one described by Ingelore.

Clutching the letters, I ran into the kitchen and threw them on the table. Gerta came quickly.

“What is going on?” she demanded.

I reached into the pile and retrieved one of the letters.

“Do you remember the tree?” I asked her. “The poster when I was little? The broken cross?” I waved the envelope at her.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “But you’ve seen that emblem since then. Why is there such disarray here?

“Don’t you see?” I screamed. “It’s not just in the streets! Now, it’s in our home!”

Nearly a month later, one evening when we sat down for supper my father asked me a peculiar question. Instead of the usual conversation between Paps and Mutsch which I was required to patiently listen to in strict silence and attentiveness. Paps turned to me.

“Tomorrow is going to be a special day,” he said. “How would you like to spend a few hours with your Paps, Mutsch, and Gerta? Perhaps looking at wondrous things from wondrous lands?”

I was intrigued. “What do you mean?”

He spoke slowly to pique my curiosity even more. “We could go to a place where there are fascinating creatures, some familiar, some uncommon. I know they would like to see us!”

“The zoo!” I shouted.

“Let’s go to the zoo!”

The next day the four of us walked along the Hardenbergstraße. Paps holding my hand as he and I led, Gerta and Mutsch following close behind. Gerta had a bag filled with tart candies that she nudged into my back continually offering them to me. I reached with regularity. My parents pretended not to see.

The street was alive. People moved about in a rhythm that varied from a slow pace to a scurry. Some had leashed dogs; others carried shopping packages. I saw families with children and clusters of tourists speaking languages foreign to me.

Abruptly Paps stopped. We were in front of a theatre. Pointing to a recess between it and an abutting building he said, “Wait there with Gerta.” She and I took the few steps and stood quietly.

From where I stood I could overhear my parents talking: Do we do this now? Is she too young? Will this just be the source of another nightmare? Can’t this wait for another time?

I couldn’t imagine what was so questionable about visiting the zoo. Then as I looked up I saw an illustration on the brick wall of the theatre. In black letters were the words: Triumph des Willens, Triumph of the Will.¹⁸

Just then Paps said, “We’ll postpone our visit to the zoo. Instead we’re going in to see this movie. It may be disturbing. If it bothers you, then tell me and we’ll leave.”

He arranged for our entry. The darkness was tangible. We found two seats in one row with two directly behind. Gerta and I sat in front of Paps and Mutsch. In a few moments the screen started to come alive. Paps leaned over to say in my ear. “Tell me when you want to leave.”

The screen filled with a multitude of clouds, then an aerial view of a large city emerged. I asked Gerta if it was Berlin and if we might be able to see our house.

“No,” she whispered, “it’s Nürnberg.”

There were parades with throngs of people lining the avenues. Then I saw swastikas on banners and flags, on buildings, on the armbands, badges, and medals on every soldier’s crisp uniform, on buntings attached to the windows of homes, many of them strikingly similar to ours and in large disks held in the grasps of foreboding iron eagles. They were everywhere. Then a plane landed from the heavens. Hitler appeared.

Father leaned over again, “Shall we leave?”

“No,” I said.

There was a large crowd gathered and a man—I believe it was Rudolph Hess—at the podium. After he finished his address several men, one after the other, made speeches.

One line in particular is etched in my mind and still echoes in my ears: “Eine Nation, die nicht zu halten ist seine Reinheit der Rasse sicherlich untergehen.” A nation that does not maintain its racial purity surely will perish.

Then I heard Paps say to Mutsch, “The die is cast.”

He rose, taking Mutsch by the arm. ”We’re leaving immediately.”

And so we did.