Spring 1943 Brings Changes

Dear grandkids,

I got to know my father better as I edited this post. Since he died, I’ve read some of his more private thoughts (as he kept a journal throughout his life) and I was struck by how deeply hurt and, as a result, somewhat insecure my father was at his core. This was definitely not the impression anyone who knew him had of him. In fact, at his memorial, the theme of my father’s life and its impact on others quickly became apparent: he was the one everyone looked up to for guidance – especially moral guidance – in their lives. He was deeply loved and admired for his wisdom, his deep sense of morality, and his kindness.

Long into my adult years, even the thought of my father dying would render me breathless and would bring immediate tears, as I considered him my North Star, the guiding force in everything I did. It was not unlike my father’s admiration for his own father and, it turns out, for his older brother. While my father’s admiration for his father was likely well-placed (though who actually knows?), he was haunted and even bullied by his older brother for decades after the war ended, even while they lived on different continents.

We’ll go into that more when we discuss Letters from Family and Friends (1945 – 1983), but here is a quick excerpt that illustrates the relationship between Rainer and Thomas as they grew older. The year was 1972. Thomas had done quite well in his career as a mechanical engineer and had even invented a 360-degree laser – a first in the field and very useful in the construction industry. He was proud of himself and we were very proud of him, too.

Rainer, however, had this to say:

“Thomas, what, please, does one do with a portable laser tool? It’s possible that you don’t know either, in which case, don’t bother to reply. Also, we are glad that you can rest on your laurels about the swimming pool you built. Obviously, you have reached, according to the Peter Principle (I hope I don’t have to doubt that you know it) the final level of incompetence and are making the best of it. To call it enviable wouldn’t be correct, because it’s something one simply has to do, that’s all.”

So this man who my father idolized all his life was, in reality, a bully and, it seems, a real butthead. The above excerpt is just one of many letters he wrote to both his sister, Ulli and to his brother, Thomas, over a period of 50 years, cruelly criticizing them for life choices they made, insisting that said choice would be looked upon with disgusted horror by their parents. Who Ulli dated, who my father married, what career my father chose – you name it, Rainer criticized it.

And yet, my brothers and I, as well as our cousins, had no knowledge of this side of Rainer. Instead, he was presented to us as my father and aunt had seen him in their youth – high on a pedestal, deserving of much admiration, to be revered. I was in my mid-forties before Dad admitted the truth to me – that this man he looked up to for most of his life was undeserving of his – or our – admiration.

And that, my dear grandchildren, is generational trauma at work.

(I’m sorry, dear family, but one of my goals for this blog is honestly. No more sugar-coating, no more misplaced admiration where it is not earned and deserved, no more baseless judgement or cruel bigotry. That stuff stops here and now.)

Here are my father’s words:

The year 1943 was marked for me by three events: Rainer leaving home, being thrown out of school, and my Confirmation. All three happened just before Easter, which in that year happened at the latest possible date, April 25.

Rainer’s departure happened first and had a significant impact on me. We had been very close - or perhaps that was just my impression because he was five years older than I, so I had a natural hero worship for him. He seemed to know everything. While I was still struggling with the first year of Latin, he was already was reading Greek. He told me political and dirty jokes, confirming what I was learning in my secret exploration of the book, Liebesleben in der Nature. Rainer also took advantage of me being a much younger brother, insisting “Vorg’n, mitg’n. nachg’n,” which is short for “vorgehen. mitgehen, and nachgehen (“go in front of me, go with me, go behind me”).” My resentment of that kind of treatment, if any, was superseded by my admiration for him as an older, and therefore much wiser, brother. That worship lasted until he died – always older, better, and richer than I.

But my admiration did not last long after his death.

(Thomas and Rainer as young adults.)

In March, Rainer left for München, where he would complete a “Praktikum” consisting of hands-on work at a machine shop, prior to studying Mechanical Engineering. With luck, he hoped to be able to audit some lectures at the Technical University, even though he knew he would not be allowed admission. My sister Ulli had been sent to live with relatives in the countryside, to be safe from bombs, so I became an only child at home with my parents, who continued to protect me from the increasingly precarious political situation. Dealing with it was a much heavier burden for them (I now know!) than standing in line, shopping, and black-out constructions that had become my job. Suddenly, with Rainer gone, I had become the oldest son. What a responsibility -- in my mind! In reality, it was my own illusion: Mother wrote Rainer regular love letters because her dedication to her first son remained as strong as ever, but also because he was handy for secretly delivering letters and greetings to Edwin Fischer whenever he gave concerts in München or Salzburg. Father, too, discussed more “adult” subjects with Rainer whenever he came home -- things one would never say on the phone because of the well-known fact that wiretapping was common.

The second event occurred at the beginning of Easter vacation. On March 31^st, the Nazi policy of Ausgrenzung^[1] caught up with me. It happened suddenly when I received my report card with the word “TERMINAL” stamped across it, and the note that I had been admitted to the State Gymnasium on April 12, 1939, and that I “left it” on March 31, 1943, which was a euphemism for being booted out of school because I was a “Mischling Ersten Grades.” For my parents, it must have been expected, because even half-Jews were no longer allowed to attend any kind of higher education. Rainer was not allowed to attend the Technical University in München, I was not allowed to remain in high school, and Ulli was not allowed to begin high school. It did not come out of a clear blue sky; it came from a sky that was getting heavier and darker, one cloud at the time. It was part of the system of slowly tightening the noose, one notch at a time.

Not one of my teachers, nor the “Gold Pheasant” Nazi school principal said good-bye to me. During spring break, I simply ceased to exist. After the brief vacation, school continued without me. Times were so confusing and so unpredictable that no one noticed the absence of one classmate. Students moved, fathers were drafted or transferred -- so what? I doubt the other students gave my absence a thought. My close friends knew what was happening, and for them it wasn't so shocking. After all (so said the propaganda machine), there was a war on, and those Jews had to be punished.

Of course, some of my friends knew which way the wind was blowing. After the war, some of them told me that they were sorry not to have given me more help and moral support at the time. Much of their indifference was simply due to the expectation that such regulations were normal. That kind of government was all any of us had ever experienced. How could they possibly know better? It wasn't until they had lived in a free democracy for a few years that it dawned in them how cruel such treatment really was. At the 50th class reunion in 1997, an elderly gentleman approached me, introduced himself as one of the Hitler Youth Leaders, and apologized that 55 years earlier he had snubbed me so thoughtlessly and openly. He had thought about it a lot in the years since, he said, and he just wanted me to know. To say that was as important for him as it was for me to hear it.

My father was obviously deeply pained by his classmates’ sudden disregard for him – no matter how much he insists that he took it in stride. I think this deeply impacted him for the rest of his life – especially in conjunction with what I see as his brother’s emotional abandonment.

In my father's notes, this paragraph appears at this point. He didn't include it in The Rim of the Volcano, but I'm taking the liberty of re-inserting it here because his words were both terrifying and prophetic: 

(Today, at the end of the century, after living in liberty for so long, the enormity of it all is still not quite fathomable. It would be equivalent to an order from the Department of Education in Washington DC saying that no high school, college, or university is allowed to admit any student with an Islamic parent. No funds would be spent on those students, as they are unworthy of an education. And no accredited teacher would be allowed to teach them privately, either. Think about that - and then imagine that there is absolutely no discussion about that new law anywhere, certainly not in the media, and that no one would dare question it, for fear of being suspected of protecting Muslims. We're so lucky that it could never happen here. Or could it? Could it be a human failing rather than a national one? Could the three necessary ingredients - people's xenophobia, demonization by the government, and the pressure of war - ever come together in America to produce something similar? Impossible! US citizens with Japanese ancestors would never be forced into internment -- RIGHT?!)

Dad wrote these words in the late 1990s, long before Trump was mentioned anywhere but in the New York tabloids. At that time, I would have thought Dad was simply being paranoid to suggest that our democracy is anything but rock solid. NOW I know that democracy is actually extremely fragile and that if someone like Hitler - or Trump - is allowed to lead, the first order of business for them is to dismantle that democracy, piece by piece - demonizing and then dismantling the media, identifying a "them" and convincing a naive population that they are to be hated, and promising that "only they" can fix the problems that plague an otherwise great nation - until they are dictators.

Okay, deep breath... and back to Thomas' story.  

I must admit that I felt somewhat liberated at the time – and what fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t? No longer would I need to put on my tie each morning, bicycle to school, take tests, and listen to old teachers for whom I had no respect, talking on subjects that didn’t interest me. I would still see my best friends in private French lessons, and the others were less important to me than my freedom from school. At first, I would bicycle to school to meet my class at the door when school was dismissed, but that turned out to be more embarrassing than pleasant. Some students greeted me and asked what I was doing, some just waved, and some noticed me and went on their way. I never knew whether they didn't want to talk to me, or whether they were just unsure as to how to behave in that situation. No one made a nasty remark, but I stopped those encounters quickly.

My parents knew that their children’s continuing education was important, even if they couldn’t attend school. As it turned out, there was a loophole in the law, and luckily my parents were able to slip me through it. I think Father probably researched it carefully ahead of time with his attorney, but I didn’t know about it until I got my final report card. The law stated that Jewish and other “undesirable” teachers were to be fired so they would not corrupt precious German students. Dismissed less-precious students (like me) could be instructed, but only by the dismissed less precious teachers. The result was that during the next 18 months I received an education that was vastly more liberal, intensive, impartial, and openminded than what my precious former classmates received.

“He’s taking it well, but not happily,” Mother wrote to her mother, about me. “Sometimes I get tears in my eyes, as when he said ‘Private lessons will be monotonous, Mutti. Do I get to invite my friends once every few months, so we can talk?’ He says ‘talk’, but he means ‘laugh’! Believe me, Mother, I haven’t heard the boy laugh for months! And yesterday in church, he fainted. He insisted it was only his empty stomach, but all I can think is, what will happen next?” Everything was very uncertain and only that constant dread and uncertainty mattered anymore.

My father found the best dismissed teachers in Chemnitz. From our French teacher I learned more German, art history, intellectual history, and common sense than in the four years before I was dismissed. And another fired high school teacher, Professor Pilzer, who was a Mischling like me, became my math and physics instructor. Herr Epstein tried in vain to fill the big gaps in my Latin and Greek knowledge that my previous teachers had already wrestled with. And when my previous classmates began to learn English in school, I began lessons at home.

Physical Education was not needed because my teachers were spread all over Chemnitz, so I rode my bike from one end of town to the other. During that time I had very little contact with kids my age. Most of my friends lived in a completely different world than I did, and most hadn’t given my circumstances a second thought.

The third event was my Protestant Confirmation, by my father’s dear friend and fellow art collector, Walter Hoffmann.

It is interesting to note what was important for my parents in this regard. I have letters from both of my parents to Adele, my grandmother. My father bragged that I was a model student in Confirmation class, and that I passed the final exam with “a special laudatory comment by the Pastor.” Mother’s concerns were more practical. “How will the child get a confirmation suit?” she asked her mother, Adele, in a letter. In Germany at the time, young boys traditionally wore short pants or knickers, transitioning to long pants and a suit only when they were older. It was a rite of passage – and I had no long pants, no suit! Mother complained bitterly to her mother about the apparent lack of understanding of the ˆBezugscheinstelle,” the Purchase Permit Office that had not the least understanding for the dire need. What was I to do - wear knickerbockers for my Confirmation? Unfathomable! Mutti finally had a bright idea: my grandfather had recently died, so why not ask her mother for one of my grandfather’s old dark suits and have it altered for me? It worked. After a few visits to the tailor and, I’m sure, considerable sweet-talking and bribing him, I had a big boy suit. The photo of me with Omama Adele, still in mourning for the original owner of that altered suit, is one of my favorites.

 

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^[1] “Fencing out” some people, as opposed to Gleichschaltung (empower to work in the same direction), which was another “program” word the Nazis loved to use.

By the way, today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. There are people in 2021 America who insist that the Holocaust never happened. Part of my incentive for writing this blog is to leave the very real words of my father and his very real memories that confirm, beyond a doubt, that the Holocaust did, indeed, happen.

The fact that I even have to say that is mortifying.