Carl's Identity Crisis and a Secret Revealed

Dearest grandchildren,

In this post, my father discusses Carl’s Jewish roots and how those Jewish roots deeply impacted his own family during early WWII.

Here are Thomas’ words:

The two thousand Nurnberg Laws were very specific in some ways - like defining a Jew in terms of one’s genealogy, but exceptionally vague in others - like declaring that Jews are not allowed to keep pets.

Keep in mind, children of a future America, that the Nurnberg Laws weren’t laws as we know them in American (the America I’ve known, anyway; “America is changing by the day… sigh. Hey, Trump was just now impeached for the second time!). They were unilateral Nazi decrees. “Laws,” in the democratic sense, is a completely misleading term.

That made it exceedingly difficult for my father’s lawyer to determine if a regulation applied to him or not. To be safe, we children were never allowed to have pets, although my greatest wish was to have a dog and become a vet.

According to the Nurnberg Laws, there were two conditions that must be met for a marriage to be considered “privileged.” These two conditions affected the lives of my parents and their “Mischling” children every day.

The first condition for a marriage to be considered “privileged” was that one partner must be non-Jewish. Thus, my mother became a hostage because, by her sheer existence, she was responsible for the safety of her beloved husband and children. The second requirement was that children who were the product of a mixed marriage must be raised as Christians, not Jews.

As you know, my father grew up in a Jewish family. He converted to Protestant Christianity sometime in his childhood or teen years, definitely before 1914*** (see addendum below). Carl grew up in Köln and later in Saxony, both of which are in northern Germany. After the Thirty-Years War (1618-1648), northern Germany emerged as Protestant (“Lutheran”), while southern Germany, the Bavarian area, remained Catholic.

Carl served in The Great War and earned the distinguished “Iron Cross, Second Class” award. During my childhood, Vati sometimes referred to that decoration with pride. A few Nazi regulations - and my father surely knew which ones - exempted Jews who had served in the World War from specific measures. I’m sure that my father put great credence into this exemption.

I do not know whether Carl’s parents, my grandparents, were practicing or secular Jews, nor do I know whether his brothers also converted - and if so, when. As far back as I remember, my father was most concerned to make sure that everybody knew that we children were Christian, and that there could be no suspicion that he maintained any ties to the Jewish Community. To that end, we children were required to attend “Ki-Go” (Kindergottesdienst - Children’s Service) at, the local church, each Sunday. It was a formal but reduced service, much like “Sunday School” is in this country. We attended confirmation lessons there and were confirmed, along with our friends at the local Paulikirche. One of the pastors at this church was Pastor Hoffmann. Like my father, he was a collector of German Romanticist art, and he became - and remained - Father’s best, most steady, and most brave friend, all the way to my father’s death. For his sermon at my confirmation, Pastor Hoffman selected this Bible verse: “If God be for us, who could be against us?” Under the Nazis, who were very leery of the use religion for veiled anti-Nazi propaganda, that was a very courageous thing to do!

Father never, ever talked about his family or about anything that had to do with his Jewish background. Oh, he often told us that as a child he only had a single tie, unlike us, and, also unlike us, he never dripped any gravy on it. And he often recited sayings that he remembered from his childhood. But my father never uttered a single word about his parents. Remember that it would have been unacceptably rude for us children to even subtly mention subjects that we knew, or even sensed, to be taboo, or somehow too sensitive. Jewishness was one taboo, sex was another. “Don’t speak until spoken to” was the rule. We never dared ask questions. We never dared break the silence that I’m sure was meant to shield us from the dangers and ugliness of the world.

I do remember that silence being broken at one point when someone said that my father’s family “came from Spain.” Like most German Jews, my father distanced himself clearly from so-called Ostjuden (“Eastern Jews”), who were considered dirty, ignorant, uneducated, Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Poland. Instead, my father considered himself a cultured and educated Sephardic (from Spain) Jew, who separated themselves distinctly from the eastern Ashkenazi Jews. I’ve heard over and over that most German Jews strongly felt that way, before and after the Nazis. Those Sephardic Jews were generally cultured and well-educated, but they were by no means the upper crust of society at large. They felt superior mainly to other Jews. That attitude, even among the Nazi elite, seems to have been expressed in the Wannsee Conference, which we will address later.

Um…. Opa Carl, you were wrong, as genetic testing (which of course didn’t exist in your day) proves! Those “dirty, ignorant, uneducated, Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Poland” you spoke of? Well, all I can say is… see the chutzpah?! You were one of them, not one of the “cultured and well-educated” Sephardic Jews. (Eye roll.)

And I, of course, am 26.2% one of them, too. My Ashkenazi Jewish background is probably also where my BRCA2 gene mutation comes from – giving me up to an 85% chance of having breast cancer over my lifetime. I’m 64 and it hasn’t happened yet, but I have a slew of upcoming appointments with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and will probably have a radical prophylactic mastectomy in the next few months.

So yeah, thanks for that.

Just kidding, Opa. I’m not angry. It is what it is and we are who we are – Ashkenazi Jews. Stereotypes aren't’ helpful, are they?

*** Addendum: Per Julia Essl (who I will write about soon… she is a wonderful source of information about Carl and she has become a dear friend), Carl didn’t convert to Christianity until 1917. That knowledge touched off an bit of an existential crisis for me today, as I realized that chances are good that Carl was a practicing Jew until he was 21, at which point he met Irmgard (my conjecture) and converted to Christianity to marry her, which he did in 1919. (Remember that her father, Arthur was a judgmental anti-Semite!) Had Carl NOT married Irmgard, he surely would have been killed with all the other Jews in Chemnitz (and Germany, and Poland, and…) – which means I wouldn’t exist…

So yeah – just a momentary “whoa, dude…!!” on my part today!