Hard Physical Labor and a Serendipitous Decision

Dear grandkids,

Thomas is deep into his story now. No need for me to interrupt!

The next morning dawned cold and clear. The same gray figures shuffled back on the same road we had been on the night before. We felt as dreary as the drizzle that had penetrated deep into our clothing just a few hours ago.

I was cold and sleepy, but not unhappy. This was the first time I was really on my own, away from the comfortable footing of home, and it felt like an adventure of sorts. I was suddenly considered a man -- old enough to work like one and old enough to suffer like one.

I knew that things could have been much worse. We could have ended up hundreds of miles away, in Russia. Or we could have been deported to Theresienstadt, or even to Dachau -- names people whispered when they were in trusted company. No, this was not that kind of concentration camp. The guards here were dour and unapproachable, but not harsh or cruel. Word was that no one was beaten or mistreated. They were just doing a job. Whatever this camp would turn out to be, it was somewhat reassuring that it wasn’t run by the SS, but rather by Organisation Todt, the building and construction arm of the Nazi machinery, whose reputation wasn’t nearly as sinister.

And, I told myself, it would not last forever -- if one could only survive the crescendo toward the inevitable apocalypse. I knew that I must lay low now and remember the Bible quote Pfarrer Hoffmann had chosen for my confirmation (“If God be for us, who could be against us?”), a defiant and courageous statement about some of the positive forces that were fermenting under the surface in Germany. Like many of his colleagues, Hoffmann used the sanctuary of his pulpit to give voice to what was good, decent, and intelligent. These values had not disappeared, but they had become voiceless.

On the first day at Munzig, we unloaded the prefabricated barracks from railroad cars. The wooden spars and trusses were heavy and were crusted with a thick layer of ice. Never had I done such hard physical labor, so I tired quickly. The other men whispered to me to slow down, to remain hidden and faceless in the crowd and only do the bare minimum. So the next day I exhausted myself less.

(The barracks at Munzig)

It took a week to build the barracks and the outhouse which consisted of a long pit with a ten-foot-long tree laid along its edge. Moving into the new barrack from the drafty barn was an event. No longer were we to sleep on the ground on moist straw; now we’d sleep on straw sacks, perhaps even on bunks. Here we were, making a major stride in the development of civilization!

I picked an upper bunk near the oil drum stove. The air would be bad there, but it would be warm. The man who called himself Wagges ended up on the bunk below, and next to him was Heiner, a frail boy my age.

Although they were all Mischlinge Ersten Grades^[1] like me, none of the men seemed to be — or at least professed to be — of Jewish religion. Except for Wagges, who made a fetish of it. He had a particular and coarse hatred for Heiner who never smiled, never spoke voluntarily, and always carried a New Testament with him. Heiner surrounded his bunk with religious pictures, and when everyone around him talked or laughed, he read his Bible and prayed. With glee, Wagges drew obscene pictures over Heiner’s religious ones. One night, when Heiner was in a deep, exhausted sleep, Wagges tied a long string to what he called “that big dunce cap”— the symbol of non-Jewishness, Heiner’s foreskin — so that Wagges could tug on it in the middle of the night.

After the barracks were finished, I rarely saw the place in daylight again. From then on, every day was like the next: before daybreak, we walked an hour to the construction site and worked until noon, when we got our rations of watery soup consisting of cabbage and caraway seeds in water. (We called it “foot rags with flees.”) Then we worked until dusk, walked back to the barracks, and slept like logs.

The evenings were short and were taken up mostly by housekeeping chores. Those of us still lucky enough to own regular socks washed and mended them, while others washed the gray foot rags (square pieces of material consisting of a mixture of recycled textile waste and paper) which had been issued to us. Clothes had to be patched and the barracks had to be swept. Some read, while others wrote letters or smoked cigarettes rolled from peppermint tea, and there were always a few who played cards. But no one stayed up late; sleep was too precious. Besides, once you were asleep you couldn’t feel the constant hunger, nor the cold.

The construction site was a terrible mess. Depending on the weather, the ground was either frozen-hard ice or ankle-deep mud -- sometimes both at once. For the first two weeks, I was assigned the job of laying the rails for the narrow-gauge muck train. It wasn’t exactly like playing model railroad, but it was more varied and less strenuous than the assignment which was to follow -- pushing the loaded cars from the place where the conveyer belt belched rock and soil from the mountain, to a dumping pit.

(Thank you, Google Images. Found with a search for “Organisation Todt” and  “rock work.” This is probably much like the work Thomas did.)

I soon proved too weak for that job, which rightfully belonged to a locomotive, and I was relieved when they put me to work where the conveyer belt was being loaded, inside the huge rock that constituted the whole hill. It was here, in the cavernous bowels of the earth, that I first realized what we were working on: these large underground caverns, hewn and blasted from the rock, were to be some kind of war material plant, away from normal air attack targets, hidden in the solid rock under an innocent-looking hill.

This was still very hard labor. Even the instructions on how to use the knee for pushing the shovel into the pile of crushed rock — given by a sensitive and aristocratic-looking gentleman in the group who seemed to know my family — didn’t make it much easier for me. After all, I was only a sixteen-year-old high school kid who knew a lot more about how to fake his Greek vocabulary than about how to get away with the least amount of physical effort in a digging crew. I tried to prove to everybody, most of all to myself, that I was one of the men and could work hard, but many times during the ten-hour days, I had to stop shoveling because my nose would start bleeding uncontrollably.

It may have been no more than a nosebleed which was responsible for one of those bizarre strokes of luck or coincidence — if there is such a thing — that come out of nowhere when everything seems blackest. Perhaps one of the guards was tired of my bleeding nose, or maybe he felt some real compassion for me. Most likely, I was in the way of him making his daily quota of rubble. Whatever prompted him to do it, he picked me as one of twenty people who were needed in Meissen, at the Organisation Todt warehouse, to unload several boxcars of supplies.

It was monotonous work, passing sacks of dried peas and 40-pound boxes of dried barley soup from hand to hand up the stairs for endless hours. Pick a box - swing it up - let it go, pick a box - swing it up - let it go. Strange as it seems, at one point we found ourselves singing. Many years later, when I heard how Negro spirituals developed from the work songs of slaves in the American South, I remembered that day. It was the same repetitive, rhythmical movement that are made easier by singing or humming, even if it has to be marching songs.

After two days, the railroad cars were empty, the warehouse was well-stocked, and the men were sent back to the quarry.

All, that is, but three. Three men were needed to maintain the warehouse and to load and unload future shipments. Herr Uckel, the man who oversaw the operation, did the picking. He was a gentleman in his early sixties who had obviously seen better and more rewarding jobs than running a warehouse.

The first man he picked was the one who would be most helpful to him, Horst Reiszmann, the young carpenter who’d had so much trouble believing he was a descendent of a Jew. Horst was to build the shelving for the warehouse. Herr Uckel’s other two choices were a purely humane deed. His second pick was a short and fragile little man in his early forties with delicate hands and an embarrassed Charlie Chaplin smile, who turned out to be a former violinist with the municipal orchestra of the provincial town of Zwickau. And the third person he picked the rosy-faced high school boy with the dreamy and bewildered eyes: me.

 

For the three of us, this meant a fantastic measure of freedom.

---

^[1] “Mixed Race, First-Degree” (or “Halbjuden” = “Half Jews”)

Summons to Munzig Labor Camp

My dear grandchildren,

I might have skimmed Dad’s story about his first love, but I read with keen interest as he described his summons to the railroad station and his trip to Munzig Labor Camp.

This is the beginning of the tragic journey that I believe defined my father’s life. As you read this, remember that Thomas had just turned sixteen. He entered Munzig labor camp as a naïve teenager, but what would transpire over the next few months would define him as a man.

Thomas writes:

I felt good as I rode my bike home from a private tutoring session with Dr. Piltzer. While in public school, I’d done poorly in math, but now all of a sudden many of the mysteries seemed to fall into place and the cleanliness of mathematics was beginning to leave an impression on me. Anyone could learn the dry formula a2 + b2 = c2, but to follow the simple elegance of Pythagoras’ proof was exciting to me.

“Well, you’ll end up as an engineer yet!” Dr. Piltzer exclaimed when I submitted my assignment, a cross-section drawing of a steam engine. Ever since my older brother had aimed in that direction, the engineering profession had gained a shiny halo for me. Not that I had any particular leaning toward technology, but it had always bothered me that I was less apt than my older brother at anything technical.

Mother had wanted me to become a bridge builder, a romantic, strictly ideological notion, having little to do with structural engineering and much more with building bridges between people and nations. My father visualized me as a Protestant parson somewhere out in the country — an equally romantic and idyllic vision, born out of the daily association with the artist Ludwig Richter -- the good shepherd with staff and dog, contentedly puffing his pipe, sitting on the carved old bench in front of his whitewashed house at sunset. Recognizing the “two souls in my breast,” they may have known me better than I knew myself, but certainly they knew their own unfulfilled dreams.

Ludwig Richter. I heard this name often as I grew up, along with names like Menzel, Winterhalter and Genelli. These were artists in my grandfather’s collection. As we grew up, we were given pieces from Carl’s collection as gifts for milestone events in our lives. For my wedding to Tom Snider in May, 1983, Dad gave us a series of 15 drawings by Ludwig Richter who was one of Carl’s favorite artists.

     

               

And what did I want? I wanted to work and live with animals. Years ago, when I was only ten, I had made up my mind that I would become a veterinarian, come what may. I had held on to this dream steadfastly, even as Dr. Piltzer made that flattering comment about my rather amateurish drawing of a steam engine.

As soon as I arrived home and took off my coat and my tie, all thoughts about my future profession were cut short by the realities of the day. A postcard had arrived for me:

YOU ARE HEREBY DIRECTED TO PRESENT

YOURSELF NEXT WEDNESDAY AT 5:00 AM AT THE

MAIN RAILROAD STATION FOR LABOR DUTY.

HEIL HITLER!

(Chemnitz train station in the 1940s.)

At the railroad station, the eastbound train steamed through the first wet snow of winter. It was not until late morning that it became clear to me what the fifty or so men who gathered here had in common. I didn’t recognize any of them. I thought I caught a glimpse of Dr. Piltzer in the crowd, but he disappeared into a different car. The men were of all ages. Some must have been at least 60, and I was younger than most, if not all, of them.

There was much conjecture, much guessing, much fear about where we were going. The officials who accompanied us were not wearing a uniform. There was no hint from them about where we were going. All we knew was that we were headed east. Poland? Russia? What for? For how long? Why?

One man in my small group had the face of a veteran street fighter and the body of a thin and frail old man. The corners of his mouth were turned down into a sneer. He called himself Wagges and spoke more and louder than anyone else. He had a devil-may-care attitude about him that was impressive, but his presence was dangerous for everyone. If this guy doesn’t shut up and quit making those derisive remarks about the Party and the war, we’ll all be in a lot of trouble. Him for saying it, and everybody else for not denouncing him.

At one point, Wagges blurted out: “Ich hab’ ‘nen Webfehler^[1] .”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, my old man was one of those dirty Jews.”

“Really? I’m half-Jewish too!”

“Me too, I’m also a Mischling! ”

That, at least, solved part of the mystery, except for poor Horst Reiszmann, a pudgy, somewhat slow young man. “You are all crazy!” he insisted. “I’m German, I’ve got nothing to do with you guys. My Dad is Hungarian, not a Jew!”

“So? It just means you’re a Hungarian Yidd! Look at yourself, you look like a whole ghetto, just like the character on the poster over there.”

Wagges pointed at a poster on the wall of the train, showing a distorted, semitic-looking face behind a door, and the caption “PSST! Feind hört mit!^[2]”

Horst stared out the window, fighting back tears. Then he borrowed a piece of paper and wrote a letter to his mother, with one burning question.

There was a long wait in Dresden, hours of stomping around on the platform trying to keep warm. War songs and marches blared from the PA system, interrupted only by occasional announcements that war news of the greatest importance could be expected at any minute.

What now? The war had been going badly for Germany. Day and night, the radio and newspaper touted a miraculous Final Victory for the Führer, but many knew that the war was already lost, and had been lost ever since Stalingrad last year. It could only be a matter of months now until total breakdown would become inevitable. No one could talk about it, of course, but many saw it, and even more longed for it.

Peace, just peace, any peace.

When the news finally came, there were no cheers from this group. To us, the news could only mean one thing - more uncertainty, and for a longer time. Germany now had its miracle weapon, advanced rockets that were flying at this very moment across the Channel toward London The V-2^[3] was here and the great turn-around of the air war had begun.

Night was falling as we were ordered into two separate cars of a local train, heading north along the Elbe river. Less than an hour had passed when the train stopped again as it had several times before.

“EVERYBODY OUT!”

It was a small rural station without a building and, of course, without lights because of the general total blackout. Through the drizzle, I could make out the chipped paint on the sign:

MUNZIG

(Thank you, Alamy.)

What the hell is Munzig?

We were ordered to form a marching column and moved out into the November night. The landscape had no details, only the trees and bushes along the road.

Thirty minutes. My pack became heavy and the cold drizzle seemed to go right through to my skin. Even the World-War-I gaters Uncle Heinz had bestowed upon me were completely soaked through.

One hour. Everybody was too tired to talk. In front of us we could see the outline of a high fence with the gate open. We were ordered across a wide-open field into an unlit barn.

“Everybody -- find some straw and lie down!”

The straw was wet, the rain was dripping through the roof, and the wind was blowing in from everywhere, but I slept more deeply than I had for many a night.

---

^[1] “I have a weaving defect!”

^[2] “Hush! The enemy is listening!”

^[3] The “V” designation stood for “Vergeltungswaffe” -- the “weapon of revenge”

Fall, 1944: Thomas' First Love

My dear grandchildren,

My father wrote Longest Year (his first book’s nickname) in 1979. My feeling is that, unlike Rim (his nickname for his second book, The Rim of the Volcano), which he researched incessantly and which he insisted be politically and historically accurate, Longest Year just flowed out of him because it was simply his memoir. Dad’s approach to Longest Year is much more natural and engaging because he takes on the role of a storyteller, which came naturally to him, whereas with Rim, with its factual political climate sections, he seemed to be more of a history professor, a role a bit less comfortable for Dad.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Dad originally wrote Longest Year in third person, telling the story of Peter Bauer, a Mischling (half-Jewish) boy who is forced to grow up far too quickly in WWII Germany during the Holocaust. When Dad merged Longest Year with Rim, he switched back to first person, but I think Peter’s personality still shines through.

I grew to really love Peter Bauer as I read Longest Year – which makes sense, since I’m positive I would have loved young Thomas Heumann!

What do you think?

 

Here we go!

Tuesday morning.

Tuesday was the day when Lippmann’s Butcher Shop sold beef broth. Watered down, but broth it was. Broth was one of the few items the butcher could sell without ration coupons. You had to get there early, though; the line began forming just after five o’clock, and there was no hope of getting any broth at all if you didn’t get in line well before seven.

I did. There were only twenty or thirty people in front of me.

Getting broth on Tuesday mornings was one of my housekeeping jobs. Since my mother died early in the year, I had to accept more of the duties around the house. Chores to exist, to survive. The simple business of living took so much time, so much attention and alertness, plus a certain amount of cunning.

We had been good customers at Lippmann’s for many years before the war, and Frau Lippmann was particularly fond of me, as she had watched me grow up from a carefree toddler to the serious boy I now was. It was only natural that the job of getting broth would fall on me. Who knows, Frau Lippmann might just slip me a small package of kidneys or a piece of liverwurst when no one was looking. For her, it was just good business to do that for some long-time customers. Eventually, at some time in the future, things would be normal again in Germany, and then one could not afford to lose customers like the Heumanns. Some time. Right now, anything normal seemed so long ago, and so far in the future.

There was no little package this time. I pushed my bicycle up Friedrich-Schlegel-Straße so I wouldn’t spill any of the bouillon from the aluminum pitcher hanging from my handlebar. By now, the sloshing liquid had formed a thin skin of cold fat, like miniature floes of ice. What a ridiculous thought: ice! I knew from the heavy smell and the texture of the dawn air that today would be another one of those warm late-fall days, the days of grace before the long winter set in.

I kicked the leaves in the gutter as I shuffled uphill, hoping to find a few freshly fallen chestnuts, dark brown and still with that smooth grain of highly polished wood, before they were all scuffed up, run over and shriveled. I collected chestnuts for no reason in particular, just to feel and enjoy their smoothness when I put my hands in my pocket. Neighborhood kids competed fiercely for chestnuts because the schools held war effort collections to ship to the soap factory.

When I opened the kitchen door, Liesbeth was already up, hobbling through the large kitchen in small, shuffling steps, making Ersatzkaffee^[1] for breakfast.

Liesbeth was a leftover from old times, the only household help the Nürnberg Laws would allow Jews to have. According to the Laws, female household help had to be over 45, so there would be no danger of racially impure offspring in case master and servant forgot themselves and committed “Rassenschande.”^[2] Rudolf, the butler — the other kind of permissible domestic help — had long ago been drafted into the army and was now somewhere in Russia. The Heumann kids had always whispered and snickered about Rudolf and Liesbeth, good souls, having a rather cozy “Aryan” arrangement up there in the servants’ quarters in the attic. No more.

Rudolf was no longer needed. The household had shrunk to where it consisted only of Father and me, now that Rainer, the oldest, was away in München, where he worked in a machine shop. He was serving the apprentice year he would need to become an engineer -- later, after the war, when they would admit half-Jewish people to universities again. For now, it was good to be a machinist because workers got somewhat higher food rations, and for the moment that mattered most, certainly more than pay or status.

My younger sister Ulli was living with our cousin Gaby in Adelsberg, on the outskirts of Chemnitz. It was lucky that Uncle Heinz and Aunt Gert could take her in. Living with them, Ulli escaped the constant threat of air raids and could be with Gaby, a much better companion than a big brother. And Gaby’s family was certainly a more suitable habitat for the 12-year-old girl than a household managed by a sickly spinster housekeeper and a solitary, grieving, and very impractical father.

(Ulli and Gaby, c 1944.)

So it was that Carl Heumann lived a withdrawn life, alone at home, alone with me, with his art collection, and with his relentless thoughts of present and future. If his thoughts were desperate, he did not let on. Sad, serious, guarded — yes, but he was too much of a romantic to admit to himself, let alone to me, how bleak their situation really was.

While the Nazi system tried to fit all the young kids into the Nazi mold in Germany, Father gave me the confidence that one could remain above the baseness of persecution simply by living a life of uncompromising integrity and correct behavior. Although he never talked to me about it, I began to understand that striving for this sense of superiority could make or break a character when the chips are down.

In a way, I believe Father repressed many of the events that he saw around him. In the early Nazi years, he was convinced that the Nazis could not last long. That is why he had not followed his brothers to America in 1938, when public intimidation and abuse of anything Jewish had accelerated to a pitch where one could foresee what lay ahead. After all, he reasoned, Konsul Heumann was a respected and law-abiding German citizen and “they just couldn’t do that to me.” He clung to this belief to the end.

Our house had lost much of the joy that I had known when I was a small boy, when these walls had been alive with warmth and music, and when well-groomed people who smelled good and spoke of things I didn’t understand came to visit. Now the air was cold, except in what used to be the children’s playroom. In other rooms of the large house, a thick dust, like the frost of a winter morning, had settled on the Biedermeyer furniture.

I hurried up the steps to my room because I still had to do some homework to finish for the Latin lesson at 9:00. I didn’t like Latin, I didn’t like Dr. Epstein who taught me, but I had come to like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which I was in the process of reading. There was so little that was stable or consistent in our lives, and here was Ovid who seemed to accept -- even embrace -- a constant flow and change, and do it with a twinkle in his eyes. I liked that.

Dr. Epstein was just one of my tutors. For more than a year now, ever since the Party had decreed that Germans classified as “Mischling Ersten Grades” were no longer allowed to get a high school education, I had been given private lessons by teachers who themselves were barred from teaching school, either because they, too, were racially not acceptable, or because they had been Social Democrats or had other subversive ideas. There was now a completely withdrawn elite underground intelligentsia whose only means of support was tutoring.

It was Herr Epping who introduced me to a much wider field of thought and of art than I would have been taught in public schools. While the high school muddled on under a new uniformed Nazi as Principal, while my former classmates spent the mornings in crowded classrooms and afternoons at mandatory Hitler Youth meetings, I, the outcast, received a broad, humanistic, and liberal education -- exactly the kind of thing the Nazis were trying to prevent!

Herr Epping was also the one who taught French to me and to two of my former classmates. These weekly French lessons were the only means of keeping in touch with my old friends from school, or, for that matter, with anybody my own age. Of course, I was also spared (or not permitted, as they saw it!) membership in the otherwise compulsory Hitler Youth, so the only other young people I ever talked to were Ulli and Gaby and, sometimes their neighbor children.

One of those neighbor children, Gisela, was the reason why, on this day, much of Ovid went in one ear and out the other. Last night, she and I had sat hand-in-hand way up there on the balcony, listening to Haydn’s Schöpfung. The melodies were still swirling around in my head, along with the memories of her sweet sideways glances when I had walked her home in the moonlight.

How could Ovid compete with that?

      

Last week, Gisela and I had spent a whole afternoon at the Stadtpark.  We rented a boat on the lake, and I rowed it across to where the big willow tree hung its branches all the way down into the water. We hid from the eyes of the world there and sat by the park aviary until it was dark.

The aviary was no architectural beauty, but to me it was more glorious than all of the Austrian Baroque Herr Epping kept talking about.

One day, as I left the house to see Gieslea, Father was ill at ease. “Um … er … Thoooomas,” he finally said, “there will be no such thing as kissing or things like that, OK?” Little did Vati know that smooching was exactly what I was going for, and we (at least I) were much too innocent and romantic for “things like that.”

That one sentence from my father comprised the total sex education I ever received from home.

In my mind, every moment of this relationship had grown into a major event, central to my whole being. After all, ahead of us was a whole life together. Last August we had promised to love each other as long as we lived — how could it ever be different? I even immortalized our whole romance in a tongue-in-cheek “Epos” (in hexameter!) which I brought to the vegetable nursery where Gisela worked as part of her war-time labor duty. I could see absolutely nothing unusual about a parody of Homer being recited right there, between cabbages and compost heaps. Gisela was so much a part of every minute of my waking day that, say, even reciting the passé composé of sentir in French class would quite naturally recall for me the scent of Gisela’s hair.

You know how I said that I devoured Longest Year when Dad gave the book to me for Christmas in 1979? I did – except for the “love scenes” – because that wasn’t… well, my mom! Silly, I know. But editing Dad’s words today was the first time that I carefully read my father’s memories about his first love. That’s just a plugging-my-ears thing, right? You’ll do it about your own parents, I’ll bet!

---

^[1] “Coffee replacement” - the stuff made from roasted barley that didn’t taste like coffee, but was called coffee because it looked like it.

^[2] “Racial Defilement” the worst crime possible: sex between an “Aryan” and a Jew or other race the Nazis chose to consider inferior

Irmard’s Illness and Death… Now What?

Dearest grandchildren,

Originally  -- as in, after my father died -- I was going to write a book, per his request to “tell my story when I’m gone.” The central theme of that book was to be the daunting role of the non-Jew in a “privileged mixed marriage” in WWII Germany, and the horrifying reality of what happened to a family when the “guardian angel” (as my father called his Aryan mother ) died. My father was correct when he said, “I believe that the non-Jewish partners in Germany’s “privileged mixed marriages” have not, to this very day, been given enough credit for what they did. They had to be incredibly strong in a brave and quiet way.”

(The last known photo of Irmgard, 1943.)

After four years of wringing my hands, writing numerous outlines, agonizing over approach, and wondering constantly whether Dad would approve (see also: “generational trauma”), I decided to change my whole approach. Instead of writing a book, I decided to start a blog in which I would simply offer my father’s works as he wrote them (how wrong I was in that; they needed heavy editing), adding my own commentary, perspectives, and opinions. I feel comfortable with this approach, but it doesn’t allow Irmgard’s character and experiences the spotlight they deserve. This post, about her illness and death, and their impact on the family, come closest to the intended theme of the book I decided not to write. I hope that someone, someday does write about the excruciating role of the non-Jew in a “privileged mixed marriage” during WWII Germany. I wish that person could have been me. But alas…

Here are my father’s words:

It was in September of 1943 that Mother developed physical symptoms that neither she nor the doctors she consulted could explain.

Sorry – immediate interruption! I actually disagree with my father’s assertion here. In Letters from Chemnitz (in which Ulli translated over 600 pages of letters, mostly between Irmgard and her mother Adele), it is clear that Irmgard began to mention mysterious physical symptoms as early as 1942.

This letter from Irmgard to her mother, dated March 15, 1942, mentions both the terror and uncertainty of war (first paragraph) and symptoms she was experiencing (highlight) – which she attributed to the terror and uncertainty of war.

Just a month later, Irmgard refers to a strange headache, and again attributes it to something else – menopause and the coming of spring (?!).

And this letter, written in late May, 1942, tells of a probable fainting episode, which Irmgard chalk up to “hunger and constant anxiety.”

My father goes on to describe Irmgard’s symptoms:

A few times a day, she would get a strange taste in her mouth brought on, she assumed, by what she described as the “terrified and angry feeling of being a mouse caught in a trap, running into bars of the cage all around.” The taste in her mouth, which she described as “something unidentifiable from my past,” would come and go within seconds.

Irmgard doesn’t mention symptoms again until July, 1943:

And then again in August, 1943…

And then, in the fall, she began to mention symptoms quite frequently. In September, 1943…

In October, 1943…

In November, 1943…

And then, finally, on December 4, 1942…

My father continues:

Her doctor blamed it all on menopause - from dizziness to depression to attacks of anxiety. Before long, her entire right side became numb when the taste came on, ‘Oh my God! Epilepsy? What would happen if I died?’ she wondered. ‘The whole family depends on me, they need me to be here and alive, to keep the marriage privileged! What would happen to Carl? What would happen to the children? Oh my God, help me!’

To convey a feeling for Mother’s state of mind and her worries for the fate of others in December, 1943 -- only weeks before her death -- it is best to let her speak for herself. She wrote to her mother:

“A broken fountain pen is annoying, but I am embarrassed to even mention it. Thousands of people have lost everything, and I am distraught thinking about all of them. Every day brings hundreds more. I had a postcard from Miss Ball and Miss von Lüttwitz. Both of their houses burned to the ground. Another friend of ours has six (!) burned-out family members. Frau Grossmann‘s brother’s house is completely destroyed, the Bahners’ son is 100% wrecked. Just now another air raid alarm. It began at 7:45 with the all-clear at 10:00. How many more people have been torn from their families? I can’t handle it anymore. I’m going to bed now.”

The next morning, Irmgard continues.

“Poor Kätchen! Is it really an ulcer or neurosis? Nobody can help anyone else anymore. That poor woman is so terribly alone. Anything we try to say now is so ridiculous, just null-and-void in face of everything else that is so enormous. It is simply cataclysmic. Thousand of people are becoming homeless each day now and they need to be housed somewhere. The most amazing thing is that everyone seems to want to return to the spot on earth where he came from. Our K’s (?) haven’t returned, and that’s good because the attic is not habitable now because of the horrible anti-fire spraying that isn’t getting completed yet. A stove is supposed to be delivered on Monday, but who knows what will happen between now and Monday. And who knows whether all the anti-fire spraying would do any good (in a bombing), anyway??

“What I am so afraid of is what can happen after a horrible shock or accident or a terrible event: epilepsy. When I tried to find out more about the strange taste I get in my mouth, I read that “… attacks are often preceded by physical unrest or the sensation a strange taste or smell…” And the numbness, always on my more sensitive right side. The pills from Dr. E. help with my nervousness, but they don’t help with that obscure, indescribable sensation that happens to me two or three times a day. I can’t tell whether it’s a taste or a smell, but it scares me to death! The more I must do, especially if it includes something enjoyable, the less it happens. Well -- enough now!”

Irmgard continues her letter.

“Now I must write down emergency addresses and put them in the air raid suitcase. Ever more emergency preparations. How useless it all seems! We are hoping for a quiet night.

If we could only get some good news soon!” -- Irmgard.

No one knows exactly what happened after December 4th, the last time Irmgard wrote to her mother. The next letter in Letters from Chemnitz is written from a hospital in Halle, by Margaret Wendt to her sister, Adele, Irmgard’s mother. (I find this confusing; why was Margaret at the hospital instead of Adele?) Irmgard was still alive, but obviously unconscious.

This, from my dad, breaks me heart. I can’t even imagine.

I remember nothing, absolutely nothing about the Christmas, 1943. I have probably completely blocked it out. The next thing I remember is the 7th of January 1944, when Father went to the University Hospital in Halle, near Leipzig, for Mothers operation. I remember keeping myself busy all day, building small naval models. It did not help. When Father came home, I knew. He called me into his office and told me that Mother had died.

I was standing in the same place where I had gotten the only slap in the face of my life. This time it hurt more.

Irmgard died on January 7, 1944 the day after Ulli’s 12th birthday. Thomas was 15. Rainer was 20.

I could not cry.

I, however, cried like a baby when I read in Letters from Chemnitz that Irmgard had died. It’s not like I didn’t expect it. I’d known all along how and when my grandmother died. But I had been immersed in Ulli’s translations for days, and when I read the letter from Margaret and saw the death announcement, I was completely overcome with grief – almost as if I had known and had a relationship with my grandmother and loved her unconditionally, like (I now realize) grandchildren love their grandparents.

Once again, dear ones… generational trauma rears its ugly hear, right?

My father didn’t have the luxury of indulging his emotions. He continues:

After all, I was a teenager who gangs up with his older brother to rebel against parents. For years, Rainer and I had made fun of our parents. We thought their behavior was just an expression of their personalities: “Er ist rund und sie ist eckig” (he is round and she is jagged).

”He” was round -- a perfect sphere, closed up, inscrutable, rolling with the tide. “She” was jagged -- nervous, distracted, unpredictable. They shielded us in every way they could from the realities of the outside world, making sure we had a happy, carefree childhood, which they regarded as the foundation for a happy life. They managed to do that very well.

I only knew of a limited number of maltreatments and hostilities. How many more there must have been! The hardest part for Father must have been the constant uncertainty of what the next day may bring. For years, my parents had been at the complete mercy of a government that meant to treat them as well as possible. They had very limited rights.

What stress their marriage must have suffered!

This is the last known family photo, taken around sometime in 1940, about two years before Irmgard’s death and three years before Carl’s.

Father’s inclination was to accept what he could not change, whereas Mother wanted to change what she could not accept. Where Father would say, “Let’s wait and see what action is necessary,” Mother would insist, “How can you accept all this with so much equanimity?!” To which Father would reply, “Bad times are filled with opportunities to evolve as a person,” emulating his life-long hero, Goethe, who said “I treasure the commotions of bad times because they make you stand on your own feet.”

Father insisted that everything bad is good for something. But Mother, who never gave up hope, but was extremely frustrated by her inability to change anything. “Everything is good for something? No -- there are some things that are absolutely not good for anything or anyone!” she’d protest. “New and bigger boulders are being placed in front of us at every step and no one is willing (or dares) to help us roll those boulders out of our way!”

Mother had a lot of contempt for Father’s patience and willingness to comply where needed. His constant drive to be accepted by everyone drove her crazy, but it served him well. He, of course, was afraid of the opposite -- that her impulsiveness might cause her to act dangerously.

And yet, Mother stood by Father through good and bad. Vati must have suffered extreme guilt from preventing Irmgard’s happiness due to the fact that he was Jewish. Having been raised Jewish, guilt came natural to him. He had married her to protect her, to give her a good life, and here he was, depending on her as the guardian angel who, by her sheer existence, would protect the entire family.

I believe that the non-Jewish partners in Germany’s “privileged mixed marriages” have not, to this very day, been given enough credit for what they did. They had to be incredibly strong in a brave and quiet way.

Mothers death changed life for me and for everyone around us. Rainer was already in München. Ulli, having only turned twelve the day before Mother died, was taken in by Uncle Heinz and Aunt Gert in Adelsberg -- a fortunate and generous gesture that was appreciated by all – especially by Ulli and her cousin Gaby, who were delighted to be together.

Father was in deep mourning for his wife, and busy with all the technicalities connected with her death - executing her will, writing to her friends, and most troubling of all, dealing with the terror of losing the “privileged” status of being in a mixed marriage. Therefore, many of the every-day tasks of living fell on me.

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Who was Irmgard Heumann (nee Buddecke)?

My dear grandchildren,

This entry is primarily about your great-great grandmother, Irmgard. Actually, in many ways, this entire BLOG is about her because her existence as a non-Jew so heavily impacted her husband’s existence as a Jew and their children’s existences as Mischlinge.

Without a doubt, I would have loved Irmgard. From everything I’ve heard, my favorite cousin Claudia (Ulli’s daughter) is much like Irmgard, both in looks and in personality – and I adore Claudia (that’s Claudia, to my left)!

    

Irmgard was, from all we can tell, practical, organized and, as Thomas writes below, “romantic and sensitive.” From the 600 pages of letters written to her mother, Adele and to others, one can tell that Irmgard was also resourceful, creative, extremely loving, and efficient – all qualities that also make Claudia so wonderful. Oh, how I wish we could have known her!

Here are my father’s words for today:

Many of my parents’ friends and families were from the Rhineland and lived there when the air war (the Nazis called it “terror bombing”) devastated the west portion of Germany -- Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, and practically every city along the Rhine. The misery of the people living in those areas was total and never-ending. My parents took in as many friends and as much family as they could, which only added to the stress for my mother, a hostess with a soft heart full of compassion. With the extra guests, everything was stretched thinner. At one point, Mutti realized that in just one of the hundreds of hotels and pensions destroyed, thousands of beds and blankets, must have gone up in smoke. Just a single set of blankets, sheets, and pillows would have made things so much better for the homeless people Mother had taken in!

(Both Carl’s and Irmgard’s families originally came from the area around Köln, which was heavily bombed.)

And yet, in spite of (or perhaps because of?) so much misery, it was still possible to fall in love. Much to our amusement, and with the teasing it called for (at least for us kids!), our mother was hopelessly in love with Edwin Fischer, the pianist whose romantic and heartfelt interpretations she endlessly admired. She was probably one of many women who felt the same way about the famous man who was adored as one of the most sensitive interpreters of the music she loved so much. But Irmgard was different; she actually met him, spent evenings with him at friends’ houses, exchanged books and thoughts with him, both in letters and in person. She went to every rehearsal she could, and once, at a famous performance of the Brahms B-flat piano concert with Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting, she actually felt him looking at her at the beginning of the third movement, when he wasn’t playing. Apparently, they talked about it afterwards. “We were both suppressing tears at that point,” Irmgard wrote to her mother about the incident.

I found an actual recording of Edwin Fischer playing Brahms, with Wilhelm Furtwängler  conducting! Wow, what if Irmgard were actually here?!

Those were the thoughts that kept Irmgard able to face life. Carl, as even a “privileged” Jew, could not accompany her to concerts, so he encouraged her frequent trips to performances and rehearsals in Dresden, Leipzig, and München. She maintained a frequent correspondence with Fischer’s secretary, but much to her chagrin, Edwin himself rarely answered the letters she wrote to him. He had his secretary do it, which made her only more anxious to get a personal reply from him.

Did Carl consciously encourage her to have this distraction from her weary life with him? Did he feel guilty for her being tied to him by the fate of politics? Did it occur to either of them that she could - maybe - have a glamorous and most satisfying life with a famous and most compatible artist? Had she made the wrong decision for herself when her brother had tried to talk her into divorce?

Both Irmgard and Carl strongly denied any of it. In fact, she even entangled Rainer to secretly deliver her letters to Edwin when he was in München, just so Carl would not find out. And then Irmgard had to convince her mother, Adele, that she was loyal - “treu” - to Carl forever.

(Carl and Irmgard in the early 1920s, shortly after their wedding.)

And yet, and yet ….

My mother was an extremely romantic and sensitive woman. Although Carl transferred the ownership of his art collection to her for practical political reasons since, as a Jew, he wasn’t allowed to keep it in his name, I don’t believe that she could ever really relate to any of the art in Father’s collection. The works in Father’s collection were precise and tightly executed and, although it was called “romanticist” art, it was far from being “romantic” as we think of the word. It relates to an ideal of life, more than to its artistry. It is like Carl’s handwriting - precise and never quite “free,” correct and proper, uniformly slanted, and predictable.

(Carl’s handwriting)

Mother’s “romanticism” was much more impulsive, leaning to music and poetry. As much as Mother needed Father’s reasonable and reserved decision-making, what made her angrier than anything was someone being “pedantic like a school master,” as she called it. In this regard, Rainer and Ulli were Mother’s children, while I was my father’s.

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.

Did Carl have a Protectorate? Who was Waldemar Ballerstedt?

Dear Grandkids,

Every good story has an exciting plot twist, a mystery to be solved, or a sharp and unexpected left turn. This story is no different.

When Irmgard died in January, 1944, Carl’s protection was suddenly gone. He was no longer in a protected mixed marriage; now he was simply “the Jew, Carl Israel Heumann.” At that point, one would expect that Carl would be deported “to the East” where, in all likelihood, he would be killed. But Carl was not summoned, and he was not deported. Instead, he lived alone in his home for another full year. By this time, his two sons had been summoned to work camps and his daughter was living with relatives. 

There had been almost 3,000 Jews living in Chemnitz before the war, but by the end of the war, there were fewer than 25. Carl did die at the end of the war, but it wasn’t at the hands of the Nazis; instead, it was as a result of the direct hit of an Allied bomb that was part of a carpet-bombing strike on March 5, 1945.

So why wasn’t Carl taken?

This question is one that both intrigues and haunts me. I asked my dad numerous times what his theory was. His answers usually centered on Carl’s positive personal attributes. He was cooperative; he was apolitical; he knew the law and abided by it; he was, you know, just a really good guy. Seriously, Dad? The Nazis didn’t allow a full (unprotected) Jew to survive because he was a good guy, because he had a nice art collection of the “right kind of art,” or even because he earned an Iron Cross in The Great War.

So why wasn’t Carl taken? This post postulates a theory. Listen up.

Here are my dad’s words:

In November 1942, the Nazis ordered my father to do physical labor, called Erdarbeiten” (“digging-in-soil work”). The only tool my father had ever held in his hand was a sharpened pencil, and now, suddenly, he was being forced to dig with a shovel from daybreak to nightfall.

As you might remember, it was decided at the Wannsee Conference that Jewish men who were not “evacuated to the east” (deported and killed) would be used for construction, military digging work, or other projects requiring hard physical labor.

There are two existing records of my father’s experience with hard physical labor -- you pick!

Version one: Mother wrote to her mother, Adele, that Carl was required to do hard physical work “in a howling storm and rain,” but that Carl accepted this fate without argument or resistance. I personally remember, though, that Vati was physically exhausted from doing work for which he was completely unfit. He said that he and two other people were the only “gentlemen” in the group, a doctor and a lawyer in mixed marriages, like him. The rest, he said, were either “real Jews” or unemployed Aryan men.

“Real Jews”? As opposed to the privileged kind? Wow. I’m gonna have to chalk this up to ignorance. Or to generational changes in attitudes. Or something…!

Version two: Waldemar Ballerstedt was the head of the Chemnitz Museum when Carl served on the Board of Directors of the Chemnitz Kunsthütte (art society). Before the war, in the very early 30s, the two were both friends and professional cohorts. Around 1934, Ballerstedt became the head of Chemnitz Cultural Office and District Cultural Warden for the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and was tasked directly by Hitler to rid Chemnitz of “degenerate art,” a task he undertook boldly and enthusiastically. Make no mistake; Ballerstedt was a full-fledged Nazi. His involvement, in fact, helped create the Nazi strategy for seizing degenerate art.

In late 1957, after ten years as a prisoner in a Russian gulag, and just before an important auction in Stuttgart, in which many works in Carl’s art collection were to be sold, Rainer received a long rambling letter from Ballerstedt. In it, Ballerstedt lamented that he couldn’t attend the auction and that he always held “great admiration for your dear father… with his gifted hands, eyes, and heart.” He gushed about his apparent close friendship with Carl and insisted that he had been instrumental in keeping Carl alive at the end of the war.

“One day,” Ballerstedt wrote, in regard to Carl’s Erdarbeiten, “I got a horror-stricken call from City Construction Supervisor Otto, who belonged to my confidential circle of cohorts, saying he had to do work at the South Arena, and Konsul Heumann was one of the people under his direction. Otto said he sent Konsul Heumann home immediately, believing that action would get my (Ballerstedt’s) approval. Otto asked me to cover his butt, just in case, which I did, with my thanks to him. I assumed full responsibility for what he had done, although I knew that I was already being considered a suspicious subject…”

Waldemar Ballerstedt

In the letter, Ballerstedt presents himself as someone who had the greatest respect for my father and his collection, and claims that he did all kinds of things for my father, none of which can be proven now. He had been a Nazi Party member since 1931 and was prominently in charge of the Museum under Nazi rule. In the letter to Rainer, full of obeisance to Rainer and to Father, he portrays himself as a protector of several Jews. He supposedly rescued Carl’s art collection from the Nazis, protected my father and other Jews in many ways, and even gave details of how, before Christmas 1944, he arranged a hiding place for Father in a small cottage he had in the deep forest -- endangering thereby his own life.

All this may be true, but I don’t know. I have sometimes wondered if my father did have a prominent Nazi protector who would help him in order to secure for himself someone who could act as “Witness for the Defense” after the war. It is possible that Ballerstedt was that protector. On the other hand, none of his claims can be proven now, so I have to leave this possibility open -- for now.

My curiosity about Waldemar Ballerstedt’s role in Carl’s life prompted me to do some digging in early 2015. Who was this man?

A few things are certain: 1.) He worked with Carl in the early 1930s and they had a congenial relationship centered around their mutual appreciation of “good German art.”  2.) Ballerstedt was a high-ranking Nazi; Carl was a full Jew, in a “privileged, protected” marriage until Irmgard’s death in January, 1944, then unprotected and vulnerable. 3.) Ten years after the war ended, Ballerstedt insisted that he had been Carl’s secret protectorate, keeping him out of Nazi clutches in 1944 and early 1945.

I set out to research who this man was and what role he played in Carl’s life. My research led me to Ballerstedt’s grandson, Michael Luts who, coincidentally, lives in Arizona. Ballerstedt's daughter, Waltraud ("Trudy"), born in 1929, is Michael's mother. His father was an American GI named Douglas Luts. According to Michael, Katchen, his grandmother and Waldemar’s second wife, told him "in about 1971 or 1972" that Waldemar protected some Jews in Chemnitz and that "some Jews even testified at his trial" before he was put in a Soviet prison from 1945 to 1955. Interesting! Michael sent me a photo of his grandfather with a group of other men, taken sometime in the 30s.

I told my father about the call and sent him the photo, asking if he by any chance sees Carl. He replied, “No, I don't. Why should I? What is this photo? It has the "golden-Parteiabzeichen-wearer" Ballerstedt prominently in front!  They all look like Nazis to me, with Parteiabzeichen,” the round Nazi party emblem on the lapels; the ones who joined the party very early, like in 1930,  before Hitler assumed power, had a golden edge around it . Those were people you avoided by a mile in Nazi Germany, because they were typically deeply convinced Nazis and had jobs to match their ideology!  Ballerstedt was one of them. That he would have protected my father out of  the goodness of his heart, not expecting art as his eventual reward, is just inconceivable to me!  Ballerstedt was classified by the Russians as one of the "Hauptverbrecher"  ("pricipal criminals") of Nazi times and was held captive for 10 years. I would want nothing whatsoever to do with his family!  Similarly, I avoid contact with the nephew of a man who was in charge of "nazifying",(that is "de-Jewing")  German businesses in Chemnitz.  Of course, the nephew now says his uncle had always been "against the Nazis" all along.  They all claim that nowadays!

Why are you getting all this irrelevant family story?

Love, Dad”

To which I answered, “To me, it comes down to this: love and peace are stronger than hate and war. 
The war ended 70 years ago, Dad. Two generations have passed since Ballerstedt and Carl lived during the same horrific time - and both were victimized, though in quite different ways, by that war. Perhaps the politics of that time mandate that the grandchildren of those involved should not be speaking to one another, but that would just propagate the hate for yet another generation. What good could come from that?

Personally, I find it fascinating that your father was never taken and I would like to find out why. Ballerstedt seems to be a significant piece of that puzzle. There WERE Nazis who helped Jews, and it seems that there's a good chance that he was one of them. Michael Luts specifically remembers his grandmother telling him, in '71 when he was in 7th grade, that Ballerstedt went to prison for being a war criminal and that Jews from Chemnitz testified in his behalf at his trial. That is consistent with what Ballerstedt wrote to Rainer.

As I mentioned to you over Thanksgiving, even people today in Germany do not talk about their grandparents if they were involved in the war, as Nazis or even "just" as drafted German soldiers. It is simply not spoken about, 70 years later - and HUGE pieces of verbal personal histories are being lost. Isn't it possible that it's a good thing that the grandchildren of two men who liked and respected one another, but happened to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum during WWII, come together to find some commonality?

Love, Carol

Dad’s reply was short: “Carol - I accept, but cannot agree with your criticism.

I left Germany specifically because I thought that sooner or later the Germans would again find another excuse to persecute people "different" from them. It was Jews in 1945, it is "Muslims" today, very obviously and openly.  Rainer left for Switzerland for the same reason.

If we forget, they will persecute Jews again.  Yes, they "don't talk" about it.

D.”

Isn’t it ironic that my father left Germany because he thought that sooner or later the Germans would again find another excuse to persecute people "different" from them… and that he came to America where, in 2016, a man who wanted to do just that became president? I don’t think my dad would have survived the Trump presidency (hell, he barely survived a month of it!), and I’m so glad he didn’t have to watch what happened under that bigot.

The long, rambling letter that Ballerstedt wrote to my uncle Rainer just before the major auction in Stuttgart in 1957, insisting that he was Carl’s protectorate, didn’t convince my father, nor did it convince Rainer… but I just don’t know! I think there’s a chance that Ballerstedt was Carl’s protectorate. I’ve questioned whether I should include the letter (Dad’s translation, anyway) here. It’s long and somewhat convoluted, but I’ve highlighted some of the more pertinent parts (for me, anyway).

What do YOU think?

It seems that Ballerstedt’s letter was prompted by his desire (but inability) to attend the auction in Stuttgart that would essentially sell off most of the art from Carl’s art collection. He speaks affectionately of Carl here: “great admiration…” “your dear father…” gifted hands, eyes, heart…” “admired the way he would cut and order glue…” “conversations between us, held dear…”

“…a mentor like Carl Heumann…”  “brim over with what’s in one’s heart…” “in his kind-heartedness…”

Ballerstedt pretty much tells his life story to Rainer. Dad would say he was “buttering Rainer up.” I refrain from the same judgement, at this point. He starts off by implying that politics were never important to him; only art was important, and Carl’s significance was substantial, “not only as an art collector, but as a human being.” He remembers the day – his birthday - when he met Carl at an art exhibit in 1930. He mentions that Carl himself dedicated the exhibit catalog to Ballerstedt.

Then we hear about Walter Hoffman. Hoffman was the Heumann’s pastor and good friend. As you might recall, he confirmed Thomas in the Protestant church years before. So these three men – a Nazi, a full Jew, and a pastor -- were friends, well into the 1930s? Hmmmmm…. not sure how credible that is!

Then Ballerstedt alludes to a mandate to kick Carl off the art council board, adding “I simply could not bring myself to boot your father out the door in the infamous year of 1936.” Remember that it was Ballerstedt’s job as a Nazi to rid Chemnitz of “degenerate art” and, one would presume, of Jews – even if they collected “good, wholesome German art.” Another hmmmmmm… maybe Dad was right!

Then Ballerstedt claims that Carl “quit on his own volition” because not doing so would endanger the museum and Ballerstedt personally.And then he insists that he was “so outraged” when Carl submitted said resignation that he could “hardly see him.” Why do I doubt this?!

Ballerstedt then insists that personal contact with Carl didn’t cease upon his resignation, but “continued almost to the bitter end,” meeting at auction houses, among other places. Did Carl go to auction houses late in the war?

And, of course, Ballerstedt mentions the incident that Irmgard refers to – the Erdarbeit, insisting that he was responsible for “sending Carl home,” and that he did so at professional risk to himself.

And then Ballerstedt essentially says that, through his cunning actions, he saved Carl’s collection from ending up in the hands of the Reich. Later, he risked scrutiny (and worse?) when he insisted on fair credit to Carl’s collection when some art from his collection was on display. IF all this is true, I think it speaks to the possibility that Ballerstedt could have, indeed, been Carl’s protectorate.

Ballerstedt then refers to going for walks with Carl “after black-out” at the end of the war and of secretly welcoming him into the museum where employees could be trusted not to turn either of them in. I’m dubious of this because, from everything I’ve heard, no one could trust anyone – especially at that point in the war!

Ballerstedt mentions that it was on one of their walks that they discussed a hiding place for Carl, “just in case.” We will never know if this actually happened – but unlike my father, I think there’s a possibility that it did!

Ballerstedt mentions someone else for whom he arranged hiding and adds that he had convinced a previous household helper of Carl’s to put Carl (“a nameless man, referred by Ballerstedt) up in her apartment, if needed.

Ballerstedt ends with “ That’s enough, because otherwise some people may get the impression that I want to brag about things that in reality have only been a prayer of simple altruism, as well as of a true Christian and German mindset.”

If all this is true, Ballerstedt is a true hero and a kind-hearted human being who was willing to risk much for his friend, Carl Heumann, and we owe him great gratitude and thanks.

If all this is NOT true, and Ballerstedt was fabricating this long, sordid tale for Rainer, well… what a fucking asshole!

(Do not swear like Omi did, dear grandchildren!)

 

In the PS, Ballerstedt continues to pile it on. He insists that Carl wouldn’t have ended up on a transport because “he would have immediately contacted me himself if he had felt threatened by any danger.” Would Carl have gone into hiding? There’s no way to know.

In this letter to the Stuttgart auction house, Ballerstedt again claims that he was “fortunate to have been instrumental at the time to protect the entire Heumann collection from usurpation by certain parties.

Again, if true, Ballerstedt is my hero. If false, what a con man.

What do YOU think?