Adulting in post-war München

Dearest grandchildren,

This entry speaks pretty much for itself. Thomas has found his way to München, found his brother and sister and now, as an orphan and a displaced person, he must begin to figure out what the rest of his life will look like.

Here are his words:

“Bitt’schön, wo geht der Zug auf Solln^[1]?” I said to the man with the heavy black mustache. He wore a uniform and looked official. I had practiced that sentence for the last half-hour while making my way through downtown München to the train station. I knew how Bavarians felt about Prussians (meaning anybody who speaks high German or another German dialect) and I didn’t want him to think I was a stranger here.

Proper high German for going (to a place) is nach (that place), but I thought that in proper Bavarian it was auf (that place), and I was rather proud that I knew that. Like all Germans, I loved the Bavarian dialect. I thought I remembered how it sounded from peacetime vacations in Bavaria and Austria so long ago. Unlike most Germans, though, I tried to imitate it.

The mustache looked at me, a bit bewildered. I must have said that wrong. I blushed.

“Nach Solln?” He said, emphatically. “18:15.” Obviously, he had seen right through me and now he tried to speak a language I would understand.

“On which track?” I wanted to know. He didn’t have to think about that one. There was only one usable platform and track. What amazed me was the amount of order which had already been reestablished here in the American Occupation Zone. The trains here actually ran on a schedule! For all I knew, the train would even leave on time. But then, things run a little more relaxed in Bavaria...

18:15. That would give me a bit of time to rest after the long trek from Hof, the town in the northeastern corner of Bavaria, at the Czech border, where I first had entered the American Zone yesterday. From there, I had hitched on a variety of trucks, staying on country roads, and avoiding the Autobahn because too many of the Autobahn bridges had been destroyed. It would take many years to fix those.

It was dark and cold on this winter night just after Christmas. I was hungry, tired, and dirty. I put one of my valuable suitcases up against a brick wall to sit on and put my feet on the other one with my backpack under my knees just in case I might fall asleep. This technique of sleeping had become a habit, helping me keep my three pieces of luggage with me at all times. The four of us had traveled far like that.

I was so ready for a bit of civilization. It had been more than a week since I’d seen civilized life, over there in the Russian Zone, at Nora’s house.

Nora. Since last April, she had been the center of my life. How hard it had been to leave her; we were practically engaged! In the days and nights before I left, we had become closer than ever. Now, knowing there would be a border between us, the parting was especially bitter, even if it was only a border inside Germany between the Western Occupation Zone and the Eastern one. As it turned out, that border cut the world in half for many years to come. When I sat there in the dark, even though strangers hurried by and huddled around me, my thoughts were far away, and slivers of poems floated through my mind:

Wie hab ich das gefühlt, was Abschied heißt,

Wie weiß ich’s noch: ein unverwundenes,

Grausames Etwas, das ein Schönverbundenes

Noch einmal zeigt, und hinhält, und zerreißt...

-

How I have felt what parting means!

I feel it still: a blunt and cruel something

That once more shows what had been beautifully tied

And holds it up in front of you, and tears apart....

Oh yes, the pain of leaving was real, just as Rilke had said. But it was not the only poem going through my mind. I felt vaguely uneasy about all that had happened in that last weeks between Nora and me. It had all been so new, so binding, so dangerous.

Es war noch Zeit, ich konnte gehn,

Und alles wäre ungeschehn,

Und alles wäre rein und klar,

Wie es vor jener Stunde war.

Es mußte sein. Die Stunde kam,

Die kurze, schwüle, und sie nahm

Unwandelbar, mit jähem Schnitt

Den ganzen Glanz der Jugend mit. Hermann Hesse

There was still time, I could have left,

And everything would be undone,

All would be innocent and clear

Like once, before that hour came.

It had to be. The hour came,

That short and sultry one, it came,

and severed with a sudden chop

The very luster of my youth.

The short train was backing onto the track and irrevocably, with a sudden click brought me back to the demands of the hour. I was almost at the end of my journey, and I was ready for it to be over. Since leaving Nora’s house I had lugged those suitcases onto freight cars and trucks, stood with them in lines full of refugees, and slept with them on straw sacks in the holding camp and in a tool shed of a railroad yard. Lugging them with me wherever I went. More trains, no beds, more trucks, and more sweaty walks, carrying with me all that was valuable to us three siblings. I was ready for civilization.

The small apartment above the fire house in München-Solln was quite civil — and even warm!

(The Solln firehouse today.)

What a relief to see that Rainer, Ulli, and Renate had arrived, and had managed to settle in. It was such an enormous relief to be together again, safely. My “room” was a couch in what passed for the living room. It was all quite homey, and they even had a pet: a hedgehog, of all things. He felt quite at home under and on the furniture, even on the kitchen table!

The morning after I arrived, I immediately embarked upon the most urgent task, registering at the police station. Not only was it the law (and still is!) to check in and out with the City whenever you move from one place to another, but it was vitally important to establish myself as a legal resident of München as soon as possible. I needed a priority standing among all the people who were vying for the right to live here. In those days, becoming a legal resident of a city was harder than becoming a citizen of another country is today. München, like practically all large cities, had seen the worst of the bombings and livable lodging was desperately rare. There were simply too many people who wanted to live here - people who had lost their homes elsewhere in Germany and had relatives or friends here, like I did, thousands of KZ (Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp) prisoners who had been freed by the Allies, and millions of refugees who were expelled from formerly German lands in the East. They had all fled into a destroyed and already crowded country. And then there was the human flotsam and jetsam of war that always seeks the cities. The Municipal Housing Office, which was in charge of assigning all lodging space, all apartments, all rooms, even all large closets (it seems), was simply overwhelmed.

I didn’t realize until a year later how critical it had been to establish my squatter’s rights there.

Next priority: food ration coupons. One could not survive on the rations of others for more than a day. Now, with the blessing of the Polizeiliche Meldebehörde^[2] in my hands, I could apply for ration stamps. I don’t remember what I got, but I remember being amazed at how generous the rations were compared to the shortages in the Russian Zone, where I had just come from. A week’s worth of rations in the American zone consisted of two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, half a pound of fat or oil, a quarter-pound of sugar, jam or honey, plus some pasta, some legumes or rice, and some skim milk. The rest, mainly fish, potatoes, fruit, or vegetables, were catch-as-catch-can (but usually as can’t catch!).

Over the next four years, the food situation improved, but only very gradually. Fields had been destroyed, farmers had been killed or were in captivity in Russia, and millions of cows had perished in the fighting. The entire transportation system was severely damaged or destroyed and there was very little gas, even for the number one priority: food distribution.

Even today, having lived for half a century in a country where food is plenty, it hurts me, down in the pit of my stomach, to leave food on my plate or throw away leftovers. People who have felt the pain of hunger will never waste food again, not even when they can afford all they want.

More generational trauma here! Throughout my childhood I was reminded of the emotional and physical pain Dad speaks of here. He had felt the physical pain of hunger down to the pit of his empty stomach and the emotional pain of food insecurity was with him not only during the war, but for years afterwards, as well. My mother, like all Germans, also knew the physical and emotional pain of hunger. The result was that food and hunger - not mine, but others’ – took center stage throughout my childhood.

Appetite, though – eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full – was an unknown concept to me during my childhood. We ate when we were told to, what we were told to, for as long as we were told to. The only context in which I heard the word “appetite” was in regards to spoiling it, never as something I could gauge or have any control over. I understand WHY I’ve experienced generational trauma regarding food but, in spite of a million diets, therapy, and even hypnotism, I still struggle to define my own appetite and to assert my own control over my own food.

Now it was time for more normal-life challenges, such as getting busy to build a future!

That required much thinking and discussion about professions and earnings potential, about personal talents and challenges, about visions and prospects. As the times dictated, those discussions were rather pragmatic and centered more on what was available and realistic, rather than on personal dreams. One had to focus on practicalities: where could I find work for a decent wage that would provide me with enough income to find a place to live and would entitle me to higher worker food rations?

Rainer had been very lucky to get a job with the American Military Government — why not try that? After all, working there got him a hot meal at lunch, and possibly access to cigarettes which were the hottest black-market item. Not only hot — they were the only hard currency: a single Lucky Strike cigarette was worth 5 Reichsmark and the “whisper exchange rate” may have been “four Ami cigarettes for one pound of bread.” Often, food or ration coupons couldn't be bought on the black market for any amount of money at all, only for cigarettes, but you had to be sure not to be caught “playing the black market” – which existed all around you. While walking down a street, you might hear a whisper. “Shoes? Fat coupons? Silk stockings?” If that item was something you wanted and could buy or trade, you followed the voice to the nearest house entrance or dark spot, and started bargaining. Just about anything could be found on the black market. Once, Rainer bought a bundle of plates of pure copper on a whim!

The black market was largely run by displaced persons, DP’s, in UN lingo, who were occupying a special place in society at the time. They were largely people freed from Nazi camps, and many of them spoke Yiddish, dialects, or languages we didn’t understand. They were considered “broken” -- dismal, miserable, homeless, and poor --yet with special access to goods and treated by authorities with tolerance. They lived mostly in the Bogenhausen District, an area of private villas that had largely survived the bombing. But the black market was not a place; it moved wherever there were crowded sidewalks or unobserved hiding places. And its currency was always cigarettes.

Rainer helped me fill out the application form for the Military Government and introduced me to a strange new world. It turned out that world didn’t want me. It was a very short interview, and it didn’t feel right. Aside from an unfinished high school education, I had absolutely nothing to offer. I didn’t know enough American English even for a dumb office job, and I didn't look like a good warehouse worker either. I couldn’t understand the American GI when he wanted to know how old I was. He kindly but firmly told me to come back with better English. At the time I was quite sure I wouldn’t.

So, what next? Schools were only beginning to open, though nothing was really operational yet. I spent a few days finding that out and ended up quite discouraged. I even tried to do a little studying on my own, but of course that didn’t get very far. At that time, Rainer still wanted to become an engineer. Under his influence, the idea of becoming an engineer made sense to me. It certainly was the kind of profession that Germany would need, and it had a certain glamour value, partly because it would be a respectably masculine and modern thing to do, partly because it was what Rainer wanted to do.

Rainer had worked at one time for a small company called Bauer Kompressoren, where air compressors were built in a small shop not much bigger than a garage. They were in operation now again, - or tried to be. Maybe I could learn something useful there and at the same time get worker’s rations. Besides, they were in Obersendling, only a half-hour walk from Solln.

        

Bauer Kompressoren hired me, and there I learned two things that I never forgot - arc welding and lighting cigarettes without matches. Arc welding has come in handy over the years. The cigarette lighting was of immediate value, as matches were hard to come by. I discovered that it was easy to jam a steel rod into a grinding wheel so hard that it took only a few seconds to glow bright red. Voilà— an instant cigarette lighter. Barbaric! (But macho.)

My guardian, Konsul Rothe, who was my father's old bank partner, was neither impressed with macho nor very pleased with where I was headed. In fact, being steeped in staunchly German values of the pre-war period, he was quite unnerved, and strongly urged a more energetic search for an appropriate institution of higher learning, leading to “the really only acceptable title” - a PhD (which he never got).

It worked. I quit Bauer.

A few years ago, on a visit to München, I drove through Obersendling againand I noticed the name “BAUER KOMPRESSOREN” in large letters atop a multi-story modern factory building. The letters alone were about twice the size of the shop I remember from 1946!

(The Bauer Kompressoren factory in Solln today. It is one of 16 Bauer locations worldwide!)

---

^[1] “Please, where does the train leave for Solln?”

^[2] Police Registration Authority

The Suitcase

Dear grandchildren,

My father didn’t tell us many stories about his life during and just after the war when I was young, but this one was told fairly often – and a re-telling was always immediately requested.

Here is an example of how one quick moment in history and one blatant misunderstanding can have a huge impact on the future.

The suitcases mentioned in this entry have histories of their own, beginning in the dusty bank vault in Russian- occupied Burgstädt and traveling across oceans and through time. When Dad emigrated to America in April, 1953, he had very few possessions or money to his name, but he did have one piece of luggage – the suitcase! (I have no idea what happened to the other one). 

Since 1953, this suitcase lived under Dad’s bed in every house in which he’s lived. I don’t remember him ever sharing its contents with anyone, but in 2014 he proudly pulled the large black suitcase out from under the bed to show it to Julia Essl, Provenance Researcher for the Albertina Museum in Vienna who had come to Ashland, Oregon to meet my father in person and learn more about his perspective and knowledge of his father’s art collection.

And a few years later, just weeks before he died, Dad shared the contents of the suitcase with his beloved granddaughter, my daughter Elisabeth.

Since dad’s death, some of the art from the suitcase has found its way back to Chemnitz in a loving donation from my father to the Chemnitz art museum, where his father Carl once sat on the board, some of it was bequeathed to the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and some of it is now with his children.

Here is Thomas’ description of what happened on that late summer day  in Burgstädt.

In summer, 1945, Burgstädt, just 25 km from the sooty industrial city of Chemnitz, wasn’t much of a town - just a neglected jumble of old houses clustered around a small Marktplatz, unscathed by war, and a bit smudgy from neglect and the passage of time. The town’s industry centered on cotton and linen textiles, with just enough commerce to justify a small branch of Father’s bank consisting of one teller, two tiny offices, and a miniature vault.

Of all places in Germany accessible to Carl Heumann near the end of the war, Burgstädt seemed to be the most unlikely hamlet to become a bombing target, and thus the safest spot to hide his most loved possessions - two specially made suitcases filled with drawings, watercolors, paintings, and etchings of German Romanticists. It was a collection that was more complete than any other in Germany, except perhaps for those in the large museums of Dresden and Berlin. Carl had a special personal relationship with each of the hundreds of pictures in the suitcases. He had a deep aesthetic appreciation of the art itself, made deeper and more tangible by his own research into the artists’ lives, into each painter’s style, and into each artist’s connection to other artists of the time, and to the world in which they lived. It was this research and Carl Heumann’s keen perception that had kept him sane and even reasonably fulfilled during the years of his “internal emigration” when he had to curtail his communication with the real world until he barely lived in it. He breathed the 100- or 200-year-old air of the pictures and, in a strange untimely way, regarded the artists as friends. As a result of his passion and the small world imposed upon him in which he was confined to his house and his own thoughts, he became the expert of the period of the artists and their thinking. He was respected for knowing his art inside and out and for understanding each piece’s relation to other art forms that had preceded it and that stemmed from it.

This mini-vault in the mini-bank in the mini-town in Saxony, like the factories and anything else that could be moved, unscrewed, pried off, and shipped east as war reparations, had been confiscated and locked up by the Red Army. It was Rainer’s mission that October day to rescue a piece of German “Kultur” from the paws of the Russian Bear.

Rainer returned home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand.

We couldn't believe it! “How in the hell, Rainer?!”

“It wasn’t easy, and I did a lot of fast talking,” Rainer began. “First, I found out that the private bank had been closed down, of course, and that everything from the safe had been moved to the Russian commander’s office. I finally found the Russian in charge. He was a middle-aged, low-ranking officer with the face of a village blacksmith. He spoke only a few words of German and gave me a blank stare most of the time while I tried to explain and plead and beg. I tried to tell him that our father was a Jew, that he had been persecuted by the Nazis, that we had been in camps, that our parents were dead, that our father had been a well-known art historian, not a bad capitalist, not a Junker (a noble landowner, very much looked down upon by the Russians), and that we were poor now.”

Rainer continued. “He took me to a dank, poorly lit basement where the contents of the bank’s safe deposit boxes had been dumped onto a table. There, I saw some of Mother’s jewelry and pointed out three or four pieces I recognized. But I didn’t want to wear out his patience with Mother’s jewelry because there, in a corner, were Father’s two collection suitcases! I pointed to them and insisted that these pictures were all the memories we had now, but he gave me the same blank stare. He then began to get a little impatient. He opened the cases and thumbed through the pictures and actually studied some of them with a rather thoughtful expression. I guess they looked harmless enough to him, nothing subversive, militaristic, or capitalistic here - just bucolic landscapes, peasants, portraits, nudes, and animals. He looked at a drawing of a horse for a long time, and even put it aside as though he wanted to keep it for himself, but I told him that this was a very dear horse which meant a great deal to a cousin of mine. He said something in Russian, but all I understood was ‘nyet.’”

“I kept talking,” Rainer explained, “saying the same things over and over again, slower and simpler, but I could tell I wasn’t getting through to him.

Then, suddenly his face lit up, his eyes and his mouth opened, and he summoned all his knowledge of German and said, ‘Papa tot?’“ sliding his finger across his neck, the international sign for ‘dead.’

“‘Papa machen?”he asked, as he made a painting motion with his hand, asking wordlessly if our father was a painter!”

“I just nodded. Then he nodded in response for a long time, obviously thinking, weighing his official socialist responsibility against his human instinct. “Papa tot (Papa is dead),’” he said again. “Papa malen!” (“Papa paints!”) and he shut the suitcase, pushed it toward me and almost smiled. I think he even felt good about what he had just done.”

Our father was never a painter – and even if he were, he could have never created the exquisite works of art that were laid out in front of this Russian and Rainer in that damp old bank vault. But “Papa malt!” was close enough for both of them at that moment, and Rainer came home triumphant, one suitcase in each hand!

    

        -----

The Russian occupation force was very much in control of everything that happened in Chemnitz in 1945. The major thrust at the time was land reform, which meant taking the land of the rich aristocratic “Junkers” and giving it to peasants, who would then live on the property in a collective farm, Soviet style.

The Russians were also most particular to remove anyone with a Nazi history and eventually anyone of the bourgeoise class. We expected that as people who had been persecuted by the Nazis we would at least be tolerated in the new society, but we saw signs that the opposite was beginning to develop. Not only were we of the bourgeois class and had gone to a bourgeois high school, but we were also partly of Jewish descent. The Russians had no love for either group.

In 1945, we still thought we were credible witnesses, unlike our uncle Heinz who had been a Luftwaffe officer and thus clearly suspect to the denazification apparatus. On Heinz’s request, Rainer wrote an exonerating testimonial for him:

“Chemnitz, 26 September 1945

“We confirm by our signature below that Heinrich Buddecke and his wife, residing in Adelsberg near Chemnitz, have housed and educated our sister Ulrike Heumann after the death of our mother Irmgard Heumann, née Buddecke immediately following the her death  in early January 1944. This effort occurred in full agreement of our father Carl Heumann in Chemnitz who was a banker and Portuguese Consul, and is now deceased. Our father was <ethnically> Jewish and was very happy that through this accommodation his daughter, as a “half-Jew,” was protected from difficulties with the then governing Nazis. This protection could credibly be assumed since my uncle was a member of the Nazi party.

As we know from repeated visits, and from statements from our father, the Buddecke couple assumed that task with great care and in full approval by our father. Our father has mentioned repeatedly that he was grateful for the help his relatives provided for his child.

Herr Buddecke contacted us immediately after the death of our father, and has been particularly helped with a dignified burial and with salvaging of existing estate property on our account.

The Buddecke couple continued to care for our sister Ulrike after the death of our father in the same manner as just described. We are taking her with us to Munich because we are in the process of establishing our own household there.

Signed: Rainer Heumann

Note: The back of this contains the notarization by attorney Gerhard Thierig.

Source: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Chemnitz

under # 30182, Notary Gerhard Thierig, Chemnitz.

Unfortunately, some of this is patently untrue, particularly the next-to-last paragraph. Heinz wasn’t anywhere near us to inform us of, let alone help us with, the death and burial of our father. Nor, to my knowledge, did he have anything to do with “salvaging Estate property.” This notarized document is an example of how one typically stretched the truth in the interest of family solidarity at the time of “denazification.” This is not to say that Heinz and Gert did not go out of their way to take in Ulli at the time. They did, and we have always been grateful.

An unexpected visit, a surprise bounty, and a branding of rebellious hope

Dearest grandkids,

In this entry, Thomas describes a happy event in 1945 - a reunion with his brother Rainer, who hadn’t been heard from in a year. Can you imagine? Instant electronic communication, like email and texting (and whatever will be invented after I write this!) not only didn't exist then, but Germany was in complete chaos, so ALL communication had been broken down for months. Thomas feared that his brother had been deported or even killed, which – given that he was a half-Jew – was completely plausible, even probable. 

I’ve spoken previously about “generational trauma.” I could feel it when I read Thomas’ description of his hunger and then of the family's sheer delight upon receiving what we would now be considered mere staples. Although I’ve never been truly hungry, I often heard about hunger from my parents who, like any parents, raised their children with their own experiences serving as their blueprint, and I somehow internalized that. I’ll elaborate on it later in this post.

Here are Thomas’ happy words.

Already the days were getting noticeably shorter and having electricity for only an hour a day was becoming more of a nuisance, but not a real hardship - at least not when compared to the hunger. Yes, there was hunger all over the land. It was not the kind of famine where whole populations are decimated and die in the streets, but neither was it the “oh-dear-I’m-absolutely-famished” hunger of well-fed people. It was the hunger that comes from years of shortages, from occasional days of nothing to eat at all, or maybe only a potato. It was hunger that is not yet agony, but is painful enough so you have trouble staying asleep at night. It was during one of those nights when I got up not long after midnight just to be sure to be among the first in line in the morning at the baker’s shop. In the morning they would bake — if the bakers had flour, that is.

Yes, there was bread that morning, and I got four whole pounds with the coupons from the family. As I approached the house, I heard excited noises – everyone talking at once, not angry, not alarmed, but happy - and before I reached the front door, Ulli called out “Rainer is here, and Renate, and she’s going to have a baby, and they are married!”

(I don’t have a single photo of Renate, the wife Rainer brought to Adelsburg that day! He and Renate divorced when their child, Andreas, was very young.)

After not seeing our brother for a year and wondering silently, with greater doubts and fears as each day passed whether something might be really wrong, here he was  - a grown man, with a mustache - and a wife! Rainer would know better than anyone what had to be done now!

Rainer seemed to know how to get food - or maybe life was just better in München, which was now in the American Zone. He brought us bread that was much lighter than the stuff I had stood in line for that morning at daybreak. And then he surprised us with a slab of bacon, real bacon, almost a pound of it! And then he showed us an incredible treasure from a land where living must be good and easy: nestled in a small box were real American cigarettes! “LUCKY STRIKE” said the bold letters on the protective box. They smelled like no cigarette I had ever smelled before, sweet and rich. Tonight, we would all share one, Rainer promised.

The cigarettes were only the beginning of the unfolding miracles. Rainer and Renate also brought a rucksack filled entirely with two cartons, one of them still sealed. They were not ordinary cartons. “C A R E” it said in big letters on the outside, and Rainer explained that it was from Onkel Willy in America. He teased that inside the box were items that we had heard rumors about, but had never seen. One of the boxes was for all of us, while the other one for two friends of Onkel Willy’s who in Saxony, to be re-packaged and forwarded from somewhere in the Russian Occupation Zone because the Russians would not permit CARE packages to be shipped into the Zone directly.

Everyone in the house gathered around the dining table where Rainer was about to pour out the horn-of-plenty in the shape of a cardboard box. The box itself was made from material so strong and so smooth that it evoked visions of peacetime and luxury.

With relish, Rainer unpacked and displayed the contents, one by one. Bags, boxes, and cans labeled with exotic names and strange titles. Dried egg powder, dry milk that tasted delicious just from a licked finger, flour so white and so fine that it seemed unearthly. A can of shortening (whatever that was), and two cans that contained SPAM, which seemed to be some sort of meat.

Then came the real luxury: a can of coffee, a whole pound of honest-to-goodness coffee, the type that came from coffee beans, not from barley! Very few people in Germany had tasted real coffee in a very long time, and the few who had any coffee at all at this point had saved it from early in the war when there had been special distributions of 50 grams per adult after a particularly fierce air raid. On high and holy days, those lucky people would mix the real coffee with the ersatz coffee, one teaspoon per potful. And here -- here was a whole pound of it!

No one could figure out what the funny looking powder called “corn meal” could be, but there was no doubt at all about the bars of chocolate, or the whole pack of cigarettes. Raisins, dried soup, green peas, rice, even some jam with real fruit in it — all treasures, all exotic because of their origin and the long trip they had behind them. What a great country America must be!

We finally reached the bottom of the box. We went to the kitchen trying to figure out what we could do with corn meal. Ceremoniously, Rainer opened one can of SPAM as one would unveil a new piece of art, and they passed it around to smell.

Interestingly, I never had corn meal muffins or pancakes, or anything made with cornmeal as a child. Even when I was an adult and had fallen in love with buttery cornbread, making it for my parents a few times, they were not fans. Only quite late in life did they begin to appreciate Mexican food, which uses a great deal of corn meal. I guess this one experience really affected my dad.

I also never had sweet potatoes as a child. Only a few years ago, as I cooked Dad a dinner recipe that included roasted sweet potatoes, did I ask him why. He explained that regular potatoes become sweet as they age and that, with the severe food shortages during the war, he often had no choice but to eat old, sweet, potatoes. Of course they had no relation to the delicious American sweet potatoes that we eat now, but my father simply couldn’t even try something called “sweet potatoes” once he left Germany!

The fried SPAM was supreme, and there was enough so everybody could have a whole slice. The corn meal looked like Cream of Wheat, so we cooked it like Grießbrei. It turned into a thick, almost hard solid which, even when salted and sugared, tasted bland. What little one could taste was new and strange. But all of us all ate it with delight because if it came from America it must be good. We decided that we probably just didn’t know how to cook it right.

After dinner, which concluded with a whole cigarette for each of the men, Rainer and I went to the little attic room where we tackled the problem of distributing the still unopened box into two smaller boxes for mailing to the lucky and unsuspecting recipients. We had two boxes of about equal size. Since the CARE package contained either two of each item, or at least equivalents, it wasn’t hard to separate. We even used the original shredded newspaper material to carefully fill the voids. (They shred the paper, Rainer said, because they don’t want us to read it.) But no matter how cleverly we arranged the coffee on its side, how hard we stuffed the dried apricots in the corners, it simply wouldn’t all fit. At last, we hit upon a particularly clever arrangement that stowed everything neatly, except one O’Henry candy bar. A mighty moral struggle with inevitable outcome ensued. “How, oh Henry, can we fit you?” “Henry, oh Henry, you are too fat!”

Henry lost. So did our morals and ethics. But, Oh, Henry — was it delicious!

I am overweight and have been for much of my life. I have an odd relationship with food, consuming it mindlessly until my plate is clean, with no regard for appetite. In fact, I don’t think appetite has ever played any role at all in my eating. I just eat until the food is gone. This is how I learned to eat. Not “eat till you are no longer hungry,” but “eat everything on your plate; you’re lucky to have this food and not be hungry like we were!” I’ve been on a variety of diets and have gone to conventional therapy and even hypnosis therapy to address my deep-seated issues with food. Ironically, the method that seems to be working now is to actually make myself hungry – intermittent fasting! I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t really explain it, but I have a feeling there’s a connection here somehow to what I learned as a child, possibly rebelling against it, or maybe embracing and reflecting my father’s experiences with hunger in his youth. Big difference, though – I get to eat when the clock says I can. Dad couldn’t.

Later, Rainer showed off a scar on his arm with the flair of a war hero displaying his wounds. Rainer’s and Renate’s pride of that scar said something about why they were now married.

During the last year of the war, until Rainer was shipped off to labor camp, they were both closely involved with the München underground student movement of which the Scholls — the executed brother-and-sister instigators of a brief but bloody student uprising — were the most visible members.

Renate was an art student and Rainer was working as a machinist at BMW. They saw each other almost daily, although it carried great risks, because for each of them these dates only compounded their crimes. As if being a Mischling was not enough of a strike against Rainer, now he was associating with the dissident underground! And Renate aggravated her own sin of association with revolutionary elements by committing Rassenschande (sleeping with a Jew).

On the 20th of July, 1944, they were both at the University with lots of strangers around them when the announcement came over the radio that there had been an assassination attempt on the Führer.

What does an impulsive girl, who is equally in love with the man next to her as with the idea of being a revolutionary, do when she hears news that sounds like the revolution has begun and she will soon be allowed to openly date (and possibly marry) the half-Jewish man she loves? What does she do when she must not give herself away, must fear everyone around her, when she must put on a somber face, when all she really wants to do is let out a jubilant scream, jump for joy, and dance?

She bends down, buries her face in her boyfriend’s arm and bites it - hard, to prevent herself from opening her mouth in a liberating scream that’s in her throat and wants desperately to escape!

For the rest of his life, Rainer had the scar to remind him of that moment of joy and hope, disappointment and agony.

Obviously I have no photo to depict this event, but in my mind’s eye it’s a movie that I’ve watched over and over since I first heard the story from my father when I was a young adult.

Unanswered questions and post-war chaos

Dear grandchildren,

At the end of this entry, Thomas introduces a mystery that has not been solved to this day, 76 years later:

Why had Carl, a full Jew, not been deported? Why, after leading the life of a prominent German citizen until he was booted out of his own bank, was he allowed to lead a completely withdrawn life, almost as if living in exile in his own four walls?

I discussed this question with my father many times. I believe that he was truly convinced that Carl was spared because he was such a good person, a man of the very highest ethical and moral standards. This made no sense to me when I heard it and it makes no sense to me today. My father was a rational, intelligent person. He knew that Nazis had no regard for a Jew’s societal standing, nor for a Jew’s impeccable ethical or moral convictions. Dad knew, logically, that Hitler wanted ALL Jews dead – especially the ones who had wealth and societal standing! But somehow, in Dad’s mind - the part of his mind that forever remained Carl’s devoted and faithful young son - Carl was left alone because he was, in his own words, “given a good grade by the people.”

Dad could not have been more wrong, but there was no convincing him – even 70 years after his father’s death – that perhaps Carl had a Nazi protectorate. That would mean that Carl was willing to act nefariously and illegally, and I just don’t think my dad could ever accept that possibility.

I believe that there were two possible people who might have protected Carl – his brother-in-law, Heinz (the same brother who had urged his sister to “divorce the Jew” years before), with whose family little Ulli had lived since her father’s death, and fellow art enthusiast and fellow art museum board member, Waldemar Bellerstedt, the devout Nazi who had met Carl years before the war began (and for whom Carl was even a mentor), who clearly admired Carl, and who insisted in a letter to Rainier written in 1957, after he was released from a Russian gulag, that he had secured a secret apartment for Carl.

This topic deserves an entry of its own, so next,  I will take a break from transcribing The Rim of the Volcano  to focus more on Waldemar Bellerstedt – who he was and the role he played in Carl’s life. I have a few theories of my own!

But first, Thomas’ musings:

And what, we all wondered out loud, had happened to our older brother Rainer? How had he survived the camp and the bombing? Or had he survived at all? Several attempts to send letters to him in München were unsuccessful, which was not surprising since mailing a letter in Germany in 1945 was about as reliable and as fast as dropping a bottle with a message into the ocean.

(It turns out, THIS is where Rainier had been.)

All communication systems had collapsed exactly when they were most needed. Millions of people were displaced and families that had been scattered in all directions were trying desperately to find each other. Prisoners of war returned from Russia, greeted by piles of debris where their homes had been, with no indication as to the whereabouts of previous inhabitants. Millions had fled their homes as the battlefronts approached and the resulting human pandemonium was so chaotic that even the bureaucracy of compulsory registration with the police was no longer functioning.

There was, however, an amazing word-of-mouth communications network. “Have you heard from so-and-so?” “Do you know someone who’s going to Frankfurt who could take a letter?” “Which POW camp were you in? Do you know someone who looks like this picture?”

Rainer was probably trying to reach us via the same tangled web. Would it work?

I visited Nora almost every day. We sat and talked about ourselves, about our future, about the names we were going to give our children (Nora wanted Bärbel – Barbara - just like her mother. I had my mind set on Klaus-Edward — a healthy Anglo-German mix). We went on hour-long walks in the forest and tortured ourselves and each other with unfulfilled longings. “We are not ready, we must wait until we are both mature enough. We have so much to learn!”

The more time we spent together and the more time we spent with Nora’s parents, the more our relationship turned into a family-sanctioned liaison. Although we weren’t officially engaged, we were regarded by family as an openly engaged couple, as it was the proper grown-up thing to do. Nora, probably encouraged by her resolute and revered mama, began to see herself as the successful doctor, the wife of the young man from the good family, the husband who would eventually be able to support his wife in the manner acceptable to both her and to her parents.

Often my visits were cut short by Nora’s self-imposed obligations. Having decided that she will be a great doctor (and soon!), she studied hard to get high school behind her. I would come to see her, bringing a bunch of wildflowers picked in a meadow on the way, or with a book of poetry in my pocket, ready to shower her with my love (as expressed in poems by others), but much to my chagrin, Nora would talk of how she would combine her career with motherhood, how she would have a beautiful wardrobe, and how she would furnish our house. I spoke of my love to Nora; Nora spoke of the role she was going to play in it — in practical terms.

Eventually, I needed to look after my own future. How was I going to finish school? The improvised classes at the Adelsberg school were certainly not the answer. I needed to talk to teachers from my old school. How much credit would they give me for the private lessons I’d had? What grade would I start in? Would I be in my old class? What would my former classmates say? They all, without exception, had been in the Hitler Youth (albeit with greatly varying degrees of enthusiasm), but now would they all be newly converted anti-fascists, or even Communists?

Being German, I knew that the first thing one needs is something official, an affidavit attesting that the bearer is certified to be politically clean and racially impure, that he was a persecuted Jew under the Nazi regime, that he was in a slave labor camp, and that he is not one of those recent converts.

I borrowed the bike from Onkel Heinz and rode to Chemnitz, which was easy because most of the 8 km trip was downhill. It was my first return to town in several weeks, and it became immediately apparent that I had been living in a vacuum — again. Very little of the rubble had been cleared away yet, except where collapsed buildings had blocked streets, but the closer I got to the center of town the more frequent were the façades of ruins that were covered with huge pictures of Lenin, Marx, and Engels, much larger than Hitler’s pictures had ever been, somewhat more heavy-handed in their pictorial message. Surrounding them were immense red banners with slogans that had a faintly 1930’s ring to them: UNITY OF THE PROLETARIAT! STATE OF WORKERS AND PEASANTS! CRUSH THE FASCIST JUNKERS! Gone were the statues of German war heroes, and in their place were blood-red obelisks, made from plywood, draped with red flags and topped by cardboard stars, erected under Russian supervision, bearing the inscription WE SALUTE THE VICTORIOUS RED ARMY! Some of them were already falling apart from last week’s rain.

Surprisingly, in the very center of town, much of the Rathaus was still standing, all of its windows blown out, much of the roof gone, but at least partly usable in the midst of an ocean of destruction. On the third floor I found an office for Victims of Nazism, and without really knowing exactly what I was after, I spent two hours in line with what I realized must all be former inmates like me.

Looking around in the line, I felt that I wasn’t in the best of company. While most of these people just looked ragged and emaciated, some looked rather scary. Besides, they talked more like underworld figures than like liberated political prisoners. It seemed rather incongruous to me that I had to distance myself again. Some of these people now were playing recent resistance fighters against the Nazis, but in reality they had only recently thrown away their Nazi Party buttons. Others undoubtedly were escaped criminals who now found it useful to masquerade as political victims.

To my surprise, I found behind the desk one of the people from my own barrack, a repulsive bully, who had been a loudmouth even in camp. Although we had never spoken to each other in camp, the personal recognition made it easy for me to get my trilingual certificate without a lot of witnesses and formalities, and as long as I got this official identification paper it didn’t bother me much to be greeted with a raised fist and be addressed as “comrade.”

(Certification that Thomas had been a victim of Nazi persecution and that he had been interned at a Nazi labor camp.)

Next stop: Dr. Epping. I found him in high spirits. The apartment house where he lived had not been bombed, he was once again principal of the girls’ high school, the Russians were his occupiers, and, at long last, he could freely and proudly advocate his Social-Democratic ideals. He, too, gave me a certificate about all the private schooling I had received after I had to leave school.

(And here, in addition, is a certificate of “total destruction via bomb” of Thomas’ childhood home in Chemnitz.)

On my return from Chemnitz, I experimented with a travel technique that I would perfect on future trips. Just beyond the hospital, Zschopauer Straße to Adelsberg started its long, steady climb with a short, steep section of road. The Russian gasoline-driven trucks and the few propane-driven cars had no trouble negotiating this short stretch, but the German trucks that had been converted to run on producer gas (generated from wood chips in a big stinking cylinder behind the cab) would invariably sputter to a near halt after a short run-up, and if a bicyclist placed himself just at the right spot, he needed only a short sprint of uphill pedaling to get up to the speed of the coughing truck, hang on with the left hand (the tailgate latch usually made a well-designed handle!) and be pulled up all the way to Adelsberg at a leisurely pace unless, that is, the truck gave up altogether and the driver had to stop halfway up the grade to stoke the wood chips in his smoldering generator.

I visited Dr. Epping and other friends of the family several times during the next few weeks, partly because I was fascinated by Herr Epping’s socialistic enthusiasm and partly because I wanted to find an answer to a nagging question:

How could it be that, in this town of 350,000 people with a formerly sizable Jewish population, my father was one of (I assumed) only a few Jews who had survived? Why had he not been deported? Much of his property had been confiscated, but how did he manage to live in his own house, a house he hardly ever left? Why, after leading the life of a prominent German citizen until he was booted out of his own bank, was he allowed to lead a completely withdrawn life, almost as if living in exile in his own four walls?

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.

 

---

^[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?

A Chemistry Experiment Gone Bad

My dear grandchildren,

This is the post where the stars in my eyes fade upon the realization that, whereas my father was a prolific writer, he was not really a very good writer. I’m spending hours upon hours a day editing his writing for grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and clarity. English was his second language, so it’s understandable, but this is the same father who (along with my teacher mother) was adamant that my ability to write well in English was as important as… well, as important as reading and writing French apparently was to his parents. (Read on…)

I apologize in advance if I am the omi who insists that my grandchildren be good writers. But seriously, guys, be good writers. It’s important!

And that’s how generational trauma happens. Go ahead – blame me!  :-)

Here is my dad’s (edited) writing for today. This entry has nothing to do with war and everything to do with the experience of being 14 years old.

In 1942, I was fourteen. It is an age when any young person, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, seeks answers to what life is all about – particularly regarding “those things that must not be discussed.” In our home, two subjects were taboo: sex and any information about my father’s relatives and ancestors. No one ever spoke to me about either of them, especially about sex. Grown-ups giggled and whispered, but we were never let in on the secret.

My research on the “sex secret” was limited to the noon hour, when both my parents had their mid-day nap. In their beds, in darkness, clad in their night clothes. That was when I had the library to myself and I could explore Vandervelde, a sex education book for grownups whose own parents probably never mentioned anything like sex, either. Like us, they were probably left to find out from friends who might know more than we did. What was all that secrecy about? Must be something great!

I looked everywhere for information about “Vandervelde, a sex education book” in Germany. I couldn’t find anything anywhere about such a book! Maybe Dad meant Van der Velde?!

These are from Amazon. Maybe I should order them and sneak a peek?!

 

I knew all about the birds and the bees because of the book Das Liebesleben in der Natur^[1]. Maybe my parents left that book out on purpose. I learned all about the birds and the bees, and did my own extrapolating about humans - wrong, of course.

     

(From The Booklooker)

I found this one, too!

My life was protected, again and still, from all that went on outside of my direct involvement with the world. My world revolved around my own life and my own concerns. One of them was Rainer’s chemistry lab that was set up on the third floor near Rainer’s tool closet. 1942 was Rainer’s last year at home. He had gotten his Abitur (basically, high school diploma) and was ready to move to München, which meant that I would inherit his tools and his chemistry lab. I was thrilled.

Our house had three stories plus a basement below. The central hall of the top floor had been turned into what amounted to big brother's territory: his tool chest and a table for his chemistry experiments. I was still relegated to the playroom for the "two little ones" (and with a girl,!), so Rainer's attic hall required his permission for entry and was to me a paradise yet to be attained, a prime reason in my mind to grow up fast. 

One day, while our little sister Ulli and our parents were out of the house, Rainer gave me an orientation on the details of his chemistry lab, showing me some of the important items in his lab, including a water hose that ran from the attic bathroom to the lab table (because you can’t run a lab without water, right?). Rainer was deep into his chemistry experiment that day, one that used stinky sulfur dioxide, something that was best done with parents and little sister out of the house. He allowed me to watch and even gave me the job of washing out the vials, which wasn't easy because the garden hose he had rigged between the bathroom faucet and the chemistry table ended in a tiny little valve from his chemistry set. But I was proud to have gotten everything clean and not breaking anything in the process. Too bad we had to stop for our Saturday bath, a directive from our parents to have completed by the time they returned.

We took a bath in the nearby bathroom. (One bath, of course, to save water.) To young boys, the purpose of a bath is not to get clean; it is for underwater car races, for submerging the toy submarine, only to have to pop up high out of the water, clearly lacking the properties of a real submarine... and it is a time for boy talk.

Our bath was interrupted by a loud voice coming from downstairs."Where are the boys... and is someone frying eggs?!" Clearly our parents and Ulli had arrived home.

Ulli, with great anticipation, thought she heard dinner frying in the kitchen. But that blip-plop-pott-pud wasn't the sound of bacon frying. Wrong. It was a steady stream of water pouring from the hose on the chemistry table, now minus its tiny valve. When we turned off  the faucet after our bath, it turned out, the sudden increase in water pressure separated the maybe-not-so-ingenious hose from the attic bathroom to the lab table. Now water was dripping from the ceilings into the bedrooms, the hall, the playroom, even running down the attic steps,rivulets forming on and under the wallpaper and finally pooling into puddles in the wood parquet! Yikes!

"Buckets! Quick! And mops! Towels, more of them!" Herr Pennsdorf, the caretaker who lived above our garage, was summoned and requested to bring with him his wife and children.It would take everyone to deal with this flood! Being an expert at all things structural, Pennsdorf looked panicked, but never lost his Saxon lethargy. "Herr Gonsuhl, he droned in his broad Saxon dialect, "That ceiling's coming down."

The fancy coffered ceiling never actually did come down, but it sported a big brown blotch throughout the war until, a few years after our domestic flood, it suffered the same grim fate as the rest of the ceilings in our house which, unlike this one, had preserved their snow-white luster.

When the excitement that naturally followed this catastrophe was over, Rainer showed me his diary entry for the day, a page filled to near-blackness with circles, spirals, confused jagged shapes and a whole cacophony of round and jagged scribbles. Rainer’s journal entry was all about our parents’ different temperaments. We spoke of our parents not by using affectionate terms like "Dad" and "Mom," but rather as "he" and "she," characterizing them as "round" and "jagged" -  and their response to the chemistry debacle illustrated their round and jagged temperaments perfectly.  Father, the “round” one (even by appearance), planned, directed and punished and worried, with all the deliberate rationality he could muster under the dire circumstances, while “jagged” Mother, in contrast, was nervous, panicked, and fastidiously practical, mopping up water and finding more buckets and towels than I knew we had.

At that time, we were still rather sheltered children, not at all conscious of how cruel life was becoming for people like my parents, while life on the surface shone with Nazi glory. How bizarre the new realities must have been to anyone accustomed to the normalcy of the life they had known. It wasn't until much later that we realized the extreme pressures weighing on our parents at that time, making it completely understandable (in retrospect) that they were acting "round, " "jagged," or any other way they could manage without losing their sanity. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chemistry was exciting, but most of the time I was busy with schoolwork, especially private French lessons from Herr Epping, a staunch Social Democrat who had been stripped of his job as principal of the local girls’ high school. Herr Epping would come to have a major influence on my life in years to come.

My parents believed that, while learning languages like Latin, Greek and English is important, one must know how to speak and write the “only truly cultured language,” French, in order to call oneself a well-educated person. My own interest in French got so strong that I began to read the French newspaper (by then of course totally controlled by the German Occupation of France!) and had French conversation with Father at dinner. That year, my Christmas present to my parents was reciting a memorized French fable by La Fontaine, including, for extra credit, a German translation.

Ulli, meanwhile, was finishing elementary school. Her teachers were impressed with her intelligence and diligence, assuring our parents that she was well qualified to enter the best high school for girls, but the Nazis would not allow it. Like us, she was a Mischling Ersten Grades and therefor would not be admitted to high school, just as Rainer was not admitted to the Technical University in München. Mutti knew that, if some Nazi, somewhere, would be willing to stick his neck out, Ulli could continue to go to school, but no official anywhere would stick his neck out. So Ulli was told that she was “still too tender” to go to high school with her friends, which was the one and only thing she really wanted. For years into her future, Ulli thought that the reason she was not admitted to high school was that she was not smart enough. Just imagine!

Everyone was constantly hungry and cold. By this time, life was interrupted numerous times during the day, and often at night, by air raid sirens. Nothing was normal anymore.

My mother Irmgard was well aware that her sheer existence as a non-Jew was the only thing that stood between her Jewish husband and an evil and hostile regime that wanted him dead. During this time, she wrote to her mother, Adele, that she was completely disheartened by a world full of madness and irrationality and that she was often “drenched in tears” over the lack of smiles and any humor in her family’s life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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^[1] “Love Life in Nature”