Brain of an engineer, soul of a poet

Dear grandchildren,

This entry from my father has been difficult to edit, as he jumps all over the place, from 1946-1947, back to 1945, and forward to 1948 and 1950! Try as I might, I can’t edit it to make chronological sense and still maintain his story. I’m leaving the chronology as is because I believe that it reflects Dad’s inner turmoil at the time, as well as his emotions when he deeply immersed himself in writing his memoir.

Whereas his storytelling of the war years focused on details of what happened in his physical world, his memoir at this point transitions to a focus on what was going on inside – his emotions, his sentiments, his fears, and his dreams.

I remember my mother (the original “Omi”!) complaining that when Dad wrote, he was “gone” to her. He would disappear into his office for hours at a time, deep into his writing and unavailable to the 21st century. I sensed this even from hundreds of miles away. NOW I finally get it, as I find myself doing the same thing – escaping from the real world of a global pandemic, insane and illogical people and politics, and an earth that is gasping and choking, choosing to focus instead on the past - and not even my own past, instead getting to know my grandfather and understanding my own father better, as I sit within the walls of my own office, deep into my own writing, unavailable to my own world.

Today is one of those days when I desperately want Dad back. I want to understand the young man who wrote this entry, the young man who lived so deep in my father, even to his dying day, but who so few people in his life since 1947 – including me – actually knew. His sister Ulli, my beloved aunt, is the only person still living who knew Dad back then, but she is trapped in her own world, one plagued by Alzheimer’s. I believe that her memories of those days in the distant past are still vivid and strong (because Alzheimer’s allows at least that one grace), but locked inside. I’ve encouraged her daughter, my favorite cousin, Claudia, to read some of this blog to Ulli, hoping to elicit some memories for her, but I fear that all these memories are left only in writings – and that breaks my heart. At the same time, I’m so grateful for my father’s prolific writings and for Ulli’s hunderds upon hundreds of pages of translations- letters to and from hers and Thomas’ parents, letters to and from friends in the 50s and 60s, and stories written in German, that we can now enjoy. My plan is to include some of Ulli’s translations on this blog.

I love Dad’s last line in this entry: “Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.” 

While Dad was a bit of a chauvinist in some old-world ways, he had a respect for and appreciation of women unlike most men I’ve known. I believe that he always turned to wise women – including, and especially his mother and my mother -  for love, counsel, strength, and wisdom, and he mentioned a few times, when men were screwing things up politically, that if they would just step aside and let women run things, we’d all be better off.

Then he’d ask what’s for dinner.

Here are my father’s heartfelt words:

Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage

Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?

Dies ist ein Ding, das keiner voll aussinnt,

Und viel zu grauenhaft, als daß man klage:

Daß alles gleitet und vorüberrinnt...

- Hugo von Hoffmannsthal

-

How can this be, that those still-vivid days

Are gone, forever gone, and vanished all?

No-one can fully fathom this,

This thing too horrible that one could fret:

Everything flows and glides away from us ...

 

Writing about the immediate post-war years will be an intensely emotional experience for me. Bittersweet melancholy and great excitement are competing for my attention as I thumb through crumbling papers dated 1946 and 1947.

I entered those turbulent years during the last few days of 1945, when I arrived in München, exhausted, scared and confused, but full of wide-eyed expectations.

The mid-1940s were years of searching and defining. Where before there had been the external chaos of war, allowing only the energy needed to survive, now there was the internal turmoil of deciding who I was to become, requiring great emotional concentration. Now, things were happening much more in me than to me, and I began to realize that I had the soul of a poet, even as I prepared for life as an engineer – mostly because that’s what others expected of me.

Those years were the most wonderful time, when the war was finally over, when life lay open before me, and when love offered the purest happiness. But they were also the most terrifying time, when the pressures to somehow finish Gymnasium (high school) felt unbearable, when two eggs or a half a sack of coal were rare and coveted treasures, and when my heart felt like it could break in utter despair. My emotions felt raw and honest, turbulent and powerful. It was a time when hormones raged and discussions lasted deep into the night – discussions about what life was all about, what was to become of Germany, and who we ourselves would be.

I began to study engineering in 1948. I’m planning to end this narrative at that time, but the era didn’t really end until 1950, when I wrote: “My life has closed its circle. I have experienced all that life has to offer - all the triumphs of achievement and pains of failure, all the joys and all the pains of love. I have brought great happiness to some people and have received endless warmth from them. I have lost everything, and I have gained everything. If I die tomorrow, I will have had a full life.” I did not know then what riches lay before me, and I was fully satisfied with the wealth of the experiences I had already had because they felt so intense.

I write this memoir from the perspective of some sixty years later, no wiser, only more cynical.

In places I will quote from a wealth of letters, written at a time when we were fortunate to use pens and paper, not email, texts, or even telephones, as our main means of communication. I’m now very glad that I kept those letters through a dozen moves halfway around the world. In some cases, I even asked the recipients to return my own letters because nothing elicit images like words we, ourselves have written. Unfortunately, even letters don’t often reflect the little everyday tidbits, things that are the communal knowledge shared by all contemporaries, writers and recipients alike. Those significant details are often only found between the lines.

Poems were an integral part of my life, of my emotions, and of my outlook on the world. I will quote poems where they belong and will attempt to translate them in such a way that at least the meaning and the rhythm come across. It is very difficult to translate poetry, but I will try anyway so that someone with some knowledge of German can read the original aloud, hear the “melody,” and sense what it means. I read aloud and learned many of these poems by heart in those days, and they have retained their magnetism and power over the years. Even now, while weeding in the garden or walking on a hike, I find myself recalling them and trying to silently translate, coming up with different translations as I mull over what the original words and meanings.

I could not write about my life in those years without also talking about the women who crossed my path, and even walked it with me for a stretch. Some seemed temporary at the time, some did not. They were all significant to me, as they all helped who I am today.

Starting with my mother, my most lasting lessons in life have always come from women.

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.

---

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.

A Listing of Laws Against Jews (1942–1944)

My dear grandchildren,

This is disturbing post because it really illustrates those slowly tightening screws that Thomas referred to earlier.

First, we hear that Jews can no longer leave Germany. Then, we just watch as they are slowly dehumanized, from “just” not being able to own pets, to their hard-earned titles being stripped from them, to no longer being allowed to go to school, to being found guilty in court because they are Jews, and finally to be deported to Theresienstadt for just about any “offense” (including the death of a spouse).

There’s not much for me to add here, but I’ll add my personal impressions where relevant. Inserted photos (except those from family albums) are mine, from Google. Italics within the decrees are my father’s.

(Note: Refer to the Bibliography post for reference.)

 

January 3, 1942 (*13, pg. 361):

The emigration of Jews is to be discontinued “since the final solution of the Jewish question is imminent.” (The Wannsee Conference was on January 20, 1942!)

January 4, 1942 (*13, pg. 361):

Wool and fur collection for the Russian front: “The German population would be upset if Jews in the future would wear furs while the German-blooded part of the population voluntarily gives up winter clothing for the front. Voluntary donations from Jews are expected so that house searches can be avoided.” (One day later, the Reichssicherheits-Hauptamt (“National Security Main Office”) made the donation of all furs, wool clothing, skis, boots, etc. mandatory for all Jews who are required to wear the Star of David.)

 

January 7, 1942 (*13, pg. 362):

Poles and Jews are to serve their sentence in separate camps under enhanced conditions of severity.

February 15, 1942 (*13, pg. 364):

Jews are no longer allowed to keep pets.

    

My father has loved animals, especially dogs, all his life. He wanted to be a veterinarian from a very young age. This decree really bothered him, even as an adult.

March 13, 1942 (*13, pg. 366):

Mischlinge (first or second degree, i.e., two or one Jewish grandparents) are not considered “of German or related blood.”

This one really gets to me – and I can only imagine how it got to my father (and his parents)! Can you imagine? If you replace “Jewish” with “German,” it’s like saying to your parents that, because they have two German grandparents (my parents), they are not American, even though they’ve only ever lived here! Or to me that, because I have four German grandparents, I am not American, even though I’ve only ever lived here. Now imagine that those deemed in that way not American are to be sent to their deaths…!

April 1942 (*13, pg. 369):

Jews are not allowed to have Aryan or mixed-marriage persons as visitors.

In her letters to her mother Adele, Irmgard notes that her family hadn’t had visitors for years. And her husband was prisoner in his own home, as his job as bank president had been stripped from him. It must have been extremely depressing. We haven’t been able to have house guests in months, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and it’s been depressing for me – but that’s NOTHING compared to Irmgard and Carl’s experiences.

April 5, 1942 (*13, pg. 369):

On police registration forms, do not list the destination of transports. Only enter “moved, destination unknown” or “emigrated.”

May 10, 1942 (*13, pg. 372):

Jewish Mischlinge (men) of the first degree must terminate extramarital relationships to women and girls of German blood. Females are to be threatened with police action. Reports are required.

June 12, 1942 (*13, pg. 376 and 380, also 384 and 385/6/7):

Jews, except those in “privileged mixed marriages” must surrender all cameras, binoculars, bicycles, typewriters, any electronic or optical instruments, combs, shavers, etc., nor are they allowed to receive newspapers, magazines, or judicial publications. They are also forbidden to buy ice cream, meat, eggs, milk, etc. If deported, all their property goes to the Reich.

Remember the phone story? Being married to Irmgard was a literal life-saver for Carl, allowing him to live a comparatively normal life. Can you imagine his emotions when she died in January, 1944? In addition to grieving at the loss of his beloved wife, he would now lose everything – the least of which were his camera, binoculars, and typewriter. NOW he had to fear for his life.

June 22 and July 2, 1942 (*13 pgs. 378 and 379):

Mischlinge of the first degree are generally to be admitted to colleges upon special application, but are not to attend high schools, unless they are in their senior year.

Rainer finished high school with private Jewish tutors (who had lost their teaching jobs), but was NOT allowed to go to college, so this one baffles me. Thomas was kicked out of school in junior high, also continuing with tutors and only finished high school after the war, in Ingolstadt (another period of his life that he wrote about, which we’ll get to later).

July 21, 1942 (*13, pg. 382):

Mischlinge of the first degree who have had a relationship with a woman whose husband is in the Army are to be arrested and immediately put into a KZ (concentration camp).

SECRET! August 3, 1942 (*13 pg. 383):

In the next few days, Jews still residing in the state of Swabia will be relocated to Theresienstadt. This also includes the partner in a previous Privileged mixed marriage who does not have to wear the Star of David. (Note: as of January 1944, when Irmgard died, that would have included Carl Heumann, had he lived in the State of Swabia!)

August 7, 1942 (*13, pg. 383) (from the RSHA):

Jews must not use their former titles or professions in submissions or other written communications with Party Offices. This regulation also includes Jews in privileged mixed marriages.

This decree prompted me to google “Carl Heumann konsul Portugal.” I can find nothing, even though original documents show that Carl was the Konsul to Portugal AND that he was allowed to keep that title. So I’m confused. Note to self: follow up on this!

August 26, 1942 (*13, pg. 385):

German-blooded servants and cleaning women may no longer work for Jewish Mischlinge or live in their residence. This regulation is also applicable to privileged mixed marriages. German-blooded servants who remain in the employ and residence of Jews after September 1, 1942 must be reported, including the reasons for doing so. (I don’t know how my father got away with continuing to employ and house Liesbeth, except that she was too old and handicapped to do any work.)

September 9, 1942 (*13, pg. 386 - from the Reich Minister of Justice):

To the High Court Chief Justice: in processes against Jews, the deciding factor is the fact that they are Jews, not in their personal responsibility.

Just… wow. So if you were a Jew and you did something that brings you to court, you are judged on being a Jew (“guilty”), not on your transgression! In other words, justice was absolutely GONE.

September 9, 1942 (*13, pg. 386):

Mischlinge of the first degree are to be dismissed from high school.

I’m not sure if something was lost in translation, but I do know that my father, aunt, and uncle were all kicked out of school (and taught by Jewish tutors who had lost their teaching jobs), so perhaps it meant all school, not just high school. Ulli didn’t know why she had been forced to leave school and believed – even into adulthood – that she wasn’t allowed to go to high school because she wasn’t smart enough! She never did return to school, even after emigrating to America, but she did work for decades at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, a job she loved.

(Ulli in Sacramento, CA, circa 1962.)

 

September 24,1942 (*13, pg. 388):

Soldiers who want to marry former wives of Jews are to be denied a marriage license. (The reason was that such wives were no longer considered “purely German-blooded.”)

October 10, 1942 (*13, pg. 390):

Privileged mixed marriage Jews are forbidden to contact the Gestapo without being asked. They can contact other offices only through their ombudsman. Books may be bought only from the Reich Jews’ Organization.

March 13 and April 1, 1943 (*13, pg. 396) from RSHA;

Jews or Poles who have completed a sentence for any crime, regardless of type, are to be turned over to a concentration camp (modified to read “to the Gestapo” on April 1).

December 18, 1943 (*13, pg. 401) from RSHA:

Jewish spouses of privileged mixed marriages that no longer exist are to be sent to Theresienstadt. (Note the date: less than 3 weeks before Irmgard died!)

Okay, THIS is where I stop and insist that Carl had a protectorate! Irmgard died in January, 1944. According to this decree, Carl would have immediately been sent to a concentration camp. WHY WASN’T HE? It was NOT because he had earned “a good note from the people,” as my father insists. It was NOT because he’d earned the Iron Cross metal in WWI, proving that he was a “good German.” It was NOT because he had been on the board of the Chemnitz Art Museum (Kunstsammlung Chemnitz) and had a highly-regarded art collection of his own.

OR WAS IT?! Waldemar Bellerstedt was a high-ranking Nazi who had served on the board with Carl and who had admired him and his art collection. Is it possible…..?! Stay tuned!

(Waldemar Bellestedt. Keep him in mind; you will see his name again later.)

October 1944 (*13, pg. 405):

All male Mischlinge of the first degree who are fit for physical labor are to be assigned to the Organisation Todt (the Nazi equivalent of the Corps of Engineers) to be used for construction labor duty.

My father was sent to Meissen, a work camp, in November, 1944. (Not sure why this happened a year after the decree and ten months after his mother’s death.) He remained there until shortly before the end of the war, when he was allowed to go (walk!) back to Chemnitz – where he found his home bombed to the ground and his father’s dead body where the basement had been. That story to come.

The Wannsee Conference and Rosenstrasse

Dear Grandkids,

In this excerpt, my father describes events that occurred and decisions that were made by Nazis in 1942 and 1943 that tightened the noose of war and significantly impacted his home and family.

My father tried to impress upon his children the absolute hell of war but, try as I might from the vantage point of my own happy, secure, privileged American upbringing, I couldn’t fathom the reality that Dad experienced. I still can’t – and I’ve been reading and studying his materials for years now.

Unless things go very horribly from here forward in America (Trump has two more days in office and then things should vastly improve with President Biden!), you won’t be able to fathom the hell my father describes, either.

I hope, for your sake, dear grandchildren, that this is the case.

Here are your great grandfather’s words:

Two events took place in Germany 1942 and 1943 that helped define the fate of Jews during WWII, but neither of these events were officially known until many, many decades later.

The first of these events was the secret “Wannsee Conference,” which took place on January 20, 1942 at an estate outside Berlin that had been seized from a Jewish family. The goal of the Wannsee Conference was to “settle the Jewish question once and for all.” Most of my information about that diabolical meeting comes from the excellent movie Conspiracy, starring Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci and Adolf Eichmann. The movie lasts 96 minutes, the exact length of time it took that Nazi gathering to decide on the fate of millions of Jews.

By strict orders, all evidence of the meeting was to be destroyed, but a single transcript of meeting minutes was found in 1947 among seized documents from the German Foreign Office.

The “final solution” was decided, or rather, approved, by vote -- by a convivial, evil, polite gathering of high officials, presided over by a most suave and cold-blooded Heydrich. The purpose of the meeting was to demand -- without written record -- the cooperation of all government branches to the order that millions of Jews would be “deported” to the East -- meaning places like Auschwitz. There was some mostly subdued discussion, but the purpose was clear: the war is not going well. Cooperate, or else. It was all done most gentlemanly, with hors d'oeuvres, fine French wine, and imported cigars.

   

The discussion that took place among these Nazis around a conference table in a mansion as they sipped wine deeply affected me as I watched the movie. The Nazis needed manpower so badly that they could hardly afford to include half Jews (like me) with full Jews (like my father) in their “evacuation” plans. Much better, they decided, to use us Mischlinge for slave labor than to transport us with the others. The Nazis in attendance were -- again, after several tries -- unable to solve that aspect of the “Jewish question,” in the end leaving it to be dealt with “after we win the war.” (They still believed, or pretended to believe, that they would win the war!) Meanwhile, they could use us to do some “productive work.” Whatever they called it, I believe that I am alive today due to decisions made – and not made – at that Wannsee Conference.

I’ve seen this movie a few times and each time it stuns me. How is it that humans can have such hatred, such malice, such callous disregard for fellow humans? Jews were spoken of as product – product that were causing “a storage problem in Germany.” The Nazis at the table discussed what would happen to which Jews. Full Jews (lie Carl), they decided, would be “evacuated to the East,” unless they were married to the “right kind of German” (like Irmgard), in which case they would be spared – but only if the mixed couple lived as cultural Germans (not Jews) and only if their children were being raised as Christians.

‘Okay,’ I’m thinking as I watch this. ‘Carl’s life – and thus my existence - was just barely spared there.’

And what about half-Jews (Mischlinge, like my father)? What, the Nazis asked, should be done with them? Sterilization was one suggestion, but it didn’t solve the “storage problem.” Then someone suggests that they can be sterilized and then used for forced labor. Ultimately, it’s decided that they will be used for labor, but no decision is made about sterilization.

‘Okay,’ I’m thinking as I watch this. ‘Dad’s life – and thus my existence - was just barely spared there.’

Each time I watch this move I experience this little existential crisis all over again.

The Nazi attendees’ main reason for not treating the “Mischling question” more aggressively was their awareness of potential riots against their oppressors. Since many German Jews, especially “privileged” ones, were already fully absorbed into German society, their offspring were even more so, and their friends were almost exclusively fellow “good Germans” who had no ties to “non-Aryans,” racially or culturally. To them, any deportation of their friends, who they regarded as fully German, would almost certainly be most offensive and intolerable, giving them much cause for protest. In all their totalitarian behavior, the Nazis - and Hitler particularly - were deadly afraid of that. But no one knew it.

The second event occurred at the Rosenstrasse Detention Center in Berlin during the winter of 1943. Hundreds of Mischlinge and Jewish spouses from “Privileged Mixed Marriages” had been rounded up from their homes and jobs by the Gestapo and brought to the Rosenstrasse Center for holding before deportation “to the East.”

Non-Jewish wives of Jewish men and Mischlinge who had been arrested and detained for imminent deportation stood outside the deportation center for a full week, First, a few of their “Aryan” wives showed up, peacefully, just trying to find their husbands and, if possible, get a glimpse of them. In the following days, more wives came, eventually joined by friends, protesting the Nazis’ actions and demanding that their loved ones be released. At one point, one of them called out “Wir wollen unsere Männer wieder!” (“We want our husbands back!”). They were desperate and terrified, but they bravely let the Nazis know why they were there. It became a chorus.

They were confronted by the Gestapo who put machine guns were put in place to dissuade the protesters. It didn’t work. A larger protest was building, now including citizens not related to the detained men.

(Photo credit: LaBrujula Verde)

After seven days, buckling to the pressure and protest, the Jewish and Mischling men were released. The Nazis were so afraid of a public protest from the large circle of “German” friends that they freed the prisoners! They even returned dozens who had already been shipped off to Auschwitz! Imagine! A protest took place in the capital city of the Reich, in the middle of the war that, if widely known, would have said to Germans, “Yes! You CAN protest!”

The incident at the Rosenstrasse Detention Center is the only known instance of Germans overtly resisting the deportation of Jews. The entire instance was completely hushed up in the press until Nathan Stoltzfus wrote a book called Resistance of the Heart in 1996. The 2004 movie Rosenstrasse is also based on this event.

 

Had Mutti known about this “Resistance of the Heart,” she surely would have commented with one of her favorite sayings: “Frauen haben mehr Zivilcourage!” Men may be brave as soldiers and brave in war, but women, according to my mother, “have more civil courage!”

“Zivilcourage” means the audacity to do something that we men, with all our “unemotional rationality” would never dare attempt. It was one of her favorite sayings, acquired and enforced by her role in her own family, no doubt. It was Irmgard’s main problem with her husband: Carl was too rational, too accepting, too willing not to protest at the spur of the moment when “they” interfered with his life and his freedom.

In general, 1942 was the first year the shortages of everyday life became really serious. People thought it could not possibly get any worse, yet rumors were constantly flying that the next ration cards would be smaller and that next year’s clothing coupons would be next to nothing. What people didn’t know, and didn’t expect, was that things would get much worse, for years to come. The food situation was probably the worst. Even potatoes and vegetables -- kohlrabi, carrots, and maybe cabbage -- were impossible to find, with or without coupons.

People helped each other as much as they could. As Mother put it, people toss the golden ball back and forth, just as we did when we were kids. Sometimes it’s thrown to you when someone sends you a coupon for 100 grams of butter, and sometimes you could spare a pound of bread. Problem is, there are always those who think the ball should constantly be thrown to them! All of us got skinnier in those years, but Mother had to feed us all the time, even when it was only a cream-of-wheat and potato cake at Christmas time.

Try to imagine clothing three growing kids in the middle of wartime shortages. Every piece of material had to be used and re-used, sewn and re-sewn, sixed and re-sized, dyed and re-dyed. Even a spool of thread or skein of yarn required a clothing coupon. Mother tried to line a pair of wooden shoes for Rainer, but had to stop half-way through because she ran out of scraps. The clothing shortage became even worse in winter because one had to wear a coat, even in the house, which was desperately cold because the grating of the central furnace had rusted through and new grating was impossible to get. Everything was hard to get. For instance, the white doors had to be painted brown because white paint, made with lead oxide, was no longer available. Neither was wallpaper. Nor shoe soles.

In 1943 there were more and more bombing raids on cities in Germany, though we in Chemnitz were mostly spared -- for now. In July, at least as many civilians – 45,000 - were killed in Hamburg alone than had been killed in England during the entire war. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people had been ruined by hunger, homelessness, injury and other impacts of war. The misery was unimaginable.

     

Most of those who survived blamed those who dropped the bombs for their barbaric methods, and of course called for revenge. Certainly, some became more hostile to the Nazi regime that had started this whole war, but would they dare voice their rage? Never -- it would only land them in jail or, as was known at the time, in a KZ (concentration camp). The sacrifices of those who died on the ground and in the air, those who mourned, starved, and lost their homes and their city, as well as the sacrifices of those who paid for the making the hundreds of thousands of bombs -- it was all in vain. Most of it was counterproductive. Yet we do it again and again.

The impact of the air war was felt all over the country. Almost everyone had lost relatives and friends, and everyone knew someone who had become homeless. We all shared what we had, yet no one had enough food to share, and no-one could lift the misery from the shoulders of their friends and neighbors.

Food and Clothing Shortages and Some Across-the-Generations Comparisons

Dearest grandchildren,

In this excerpt, my father, Thomas, describes some of the difficulties of everyday living in the very early 1940s.

Can you imagine spending hours per day on the task of simply finding food to eat? It wasn’t a matter of going to the grocery store, finding what you need on a well-stocked shelf, and then paying for the groceries, as it is here (now, still, anyway; the future in America has never been as tenuous as it is now!). And in most cases, it didn’t matter whether you had very little money or plenty of money; food was hard to find for everyone and coupons were required for many items.

When your parents, my children, grew out of their clothes, we simply went to the store to buy the next size up to again fill their closets. Can you imagine owning just one pair of pants, one shirt, one dress (girls never wore pants back then!)?

I was heavily influenced by my parents’ experiences during WWII (yes, my German mother experienced wartime shortages, too) and I was reminded of their experiences at almost every meal and every shopping trip during my childhood. “Eat everything on your plate; we would have been so lucky to have a meal like this!” When, in fourth grade, I complained that I only had two dresses, I was reminded that German girls during the war were lucky to have one.

My parents didn’t mean to transfer their traumatic experiences to us; it just happened. That’s called “generational trauma,” and I am coming to realize (this late in life!) that my brothers and I are the beneficiaries (“victims” is the wrong word) of it.

My three brothers (Stephan, Michael, and Christopher) and me in about 1963, along with Betsy, our dog. Michael had “graduated” to a suit and tie for this occasion, but the rest of us are wearing Bavarian loden coats (probably more from my Bavarian mother’s influence than my Saxon father’s influence). I have many photos (and memories) of my brothers wearing lederhosen as play clothes, which they must have hated, and I always had a dirndl dress – which I loved, actually! My hair is in a simple ponytail here, but I have vivid memories of a tight bun or “hoop braids”!

The daily demands on my mother to keep her Jewish husband and Mischling children safe and secure must have felt completely overwhelming to her, though we kids noticed only that she seemed increasingly nervous. Little did we know the pressure she was facing!

Life was getting harder for everyone, even those who didn’t have to constantly fear the hostile confrontations from the regime, as our family did.

Food, of course, was a constant and central concern for Mother. She spent a great deal of time and effort finding out what food was available, where, and whether rationing coupons were required.

On top of the worry about food, Mother was concerned about keeping three growing children clothed. Ulli, our sister, was easiest: as she grew, Mother could usually crochet another few centimeters to the bottom or shoulders of her dress. We boys, luckily, had Lederhosen we wore every day - the dirtier, the “cooler”! Everything wearable required a Bezugsschein (purchase certificate), another bureaucratic function handled by The Party. If one could prove (or convince a Party employee!) that one really needed a shirt or dress or new pair of shoes (or even new soles for an old pair), one would get a piece of paper authorizing the purchase. Then, one had to find it -- another time consuming and often hopeless task!

 

     

Left: me in kindergarten. My mother knit this dress and, just like my father describes, new rows were added as I grew. Right: School picture day in third grade warranted a dirndl dress.

  

And… next generation! Erin (Elisabeth) in the same dress, and in a dirndl. My mother (the original “Omi”!) always made sure my girls had dirndls!

     

My “baby” brother, Chris, wearing lederhosen, with Stephan (and another dog, “Silver”), circa 1962. Michael’s lederhosen (circa 1954) were a bit too big, yes?!

Everything was hard to get. I remember trying to find out one day how Father’s safety razor worked. When I put it back together, I over-tightened its handle so that it yanked out the screw from the head. It was irreplaceable. Father was so furious that my punishment was a whole month without allowance, and he had to resort to his old razor knife and leather strap.

Father’s pride and joy were the Cuban cigars he had saved from better days. At times, Mother liked to give a cigar as bribe or thanks to some workers or service people who were also harder and harder to find and employ. How do you tell if one cigar had been removed from the box? Father came up with a system I spent hours trying to figure out: when he, himself took one cigar out, what he left in the box had a specific relationship between the number of cigars on the top layer, the number of cigars on the right, and the number of cigars on the left. I recorded, I observed, and I showed him a record I kept. He looked at it with a quick glance and said, “They’re all right, except this one.” He had picked out the one I put in wrong just to trick him! I decided right then and there that the job of detective would never be for me. And statistician would be most questionable!

One day, a telephone repairman arrived, saying he needed to make “a repair” on the phone in Father’s sitting room. My parents must have thought of the possibility that his “repair” was actually an installation or re-wiring in order to make the receiver into a permanent wiretap. The next time my parents entertained company in that room, a guest wanted to be sure that they could talk freely, as the phone being bugged was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, he assured us. “You know, the walls have ears now!” he said. So, my mother got a fat, well-padded tea cozy and put it over the telephone. “Now we can talk.”

Chances are, Father didn’t say much worthy of a bugged phone. Whenever someone wanted to engage him in a political discussion, he cut them short: “But Herr Doktor, you know that I am a completely apolitical person!” That normally stopped the talk right then. There was only one political remark I ever overheard from Father. It came in June,1941, when Hitler invaded Russia. Father said: “The Napoleonic adventure all over again!”

Enough said! And how prophetic!

No Telephones for Jews!

Dear grandkids,

This story is one that really hit me hard when my father told me that Jurgen Nitsche had found these materials while researching Carl Heumann’s past. As my father notes, it is a typical example of how arbitrary one’s existence was, and how completely unpredictable life was.

Can you imagine?

Imagine if the fact that you have blue (or green, or brown) means that you are worthy of being killed – simply because you have that color eyes. Now imagine that, if you have that color eyes AND a phone (or a… I don’t know what the equivalent will be in 20 years!) in your name, you are to be arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where you will certainly be killed. THAT is what Carl and Irmgard dealt with in September, 1941 – and they made every attempt to keep those stressful life/death issues from their young children. It must have been an awful time for them (all)!

My father translated ALL of the documents referred to in his excerpt, and I am adding most of them here, at the end of the excerpt. This story is THAT important, because of what it symbolizes.

Here are my dad’s words:

On July 19, 1940, a decree was issued saying (*13 - pg 325) “Jews are excluded from having a telephone connection. Exceptions are persons who live in a privileged mixed marriage.” That did not keep the head of the NSDAP Regional County Office^[1] from sending a letter, dated September 29, 1941, to the Postal Authority with the subject “Official Telephone Directory of the Reich Postal Service Chemnitz, Year 1941.” It was to initiate criminal proceedings and it said:

“As you can see on page 48, in the white pages of the Directory, there is a listing for a ‘Carl Heumann, banker, retired, Friedrich-Schlegel-Strasse 10, telephone number 31724.’

I assume it should be well known to you^[2] that the one concerned here is the Jew Carl Israel Heumann who has no right whatsoever to even possess any kind of telephone.

I therefore ask you to act accordingly and notify me of the result.

  Heil Hitler!

(Signature, complete with counter signature, stamps, etc.)

The whole process was too tedious to reproduce here -- so allow me to paraphrase:

The postal authority wrote back to the Party office something like this: “Yes, the Jew Carl Heumann had not applied to add his middle name Israel, but according to the Gestapo office responsible for Jewish matters, he is a full Jew in a privileged mixed marriage, and according to the Gestapo he can be granted telephone service. He has now applied to include “Israel” in his name, but wants to transfer the phone to his wife, who is a citizen. But this would be a falsification of the real circumstances. May we do it?”

Party: “Yes, but he didn’t apply for changing his name, therefore, according to my direction, cancel his connection immediately. If his wife later applies, I will decide then. You were ordered to initiate a criminal proceeding against the Jew Heumann; what are you doing about it?”

Post Office: “Yes, he didn’t do it, so charges have to be filed. We didn’t want to duplicate it, and we didn’t know if the Party has already done so, therefore we didn’t.”

Then follows a long letter from Irmgard to the Reich Postal Minister in Berlin: “Oh yes, he did apply to the Police Chief and every agency listed in the directive, but he assumed that they would notify everybody else who needed it. We feel completely innocent, and besides … (what follows is four pages of justification - that she is Aryan, comes from a very German family, and that she, as an Aryan, needs a phone for emergencies, etc…)

That letter apparently prompted lengthy correspondence and file notes, and finally a handwritten and signed comment: “Therefore no charges to be filed.”

And she got the phone under her name.

This was much too close for comfort. Two Nazi agencies, and maybe a dozen individuals thought they had found a good reason - under a whole slew of paragraphs and directives and “laws” and opinions - to arrest him. Meaning Concentration Camp.

It is a very typical example of how arbitrary one’s existence was, and how unpredictable life was. Any one, at any time, could change the interpretation of directives, as long as he could cover his ass with some paragraphs of one kind or other. No one could predict from which direction the next attack would come and whether it might be possible again to wiggle out from under it.

In 2006, Dr. Nitsche in Chemnitz found some incidents about my family. What else is still hidden in the archives? What other harassments, what other chicanery did my parents have to go through that I haven’t heard about?

And we over-protected children had not the slightest knowledge of the hostilities my parents had to deal with! All we could see was that Mother was getting more and more “nervous” and distracted! We only called her “eckig” (angular) and made fun of her!

---

^[1] the Kreisleiter, head of the “Kreis” of the party, equivalent to a county-wide government office.

^[2] What he meant was: your office is right across the street from where he lives -- how could you, of all people, not know that this address belongs to the JEW Heumann?

 

Here are my father’s translations of the documents referred to above.