Back to Germany – October 2016.

We are born as a result of events. Sometimes these events are very local and personal and sometimes they are the result of shattering historical events of international significance. I would not likely be alive if not for historical anti-Semitism that ultimately gave rise to the Nazi era and the outcomes of the Holocaust.  Simply put, my parents would never have met if the Holocaust didn't happen.

I decided to go to Germany to see a play about the grandparents that I never met and knew little about.  I visited Germany in 1970, which was for me the heart of the beast. Then, most everywhere I turned I faced people that either were directly involved in supporting Hitler or were bystanders.  Both bystanders and those directly involved all shared in the murder of my family and the Genocide of millions.

My first impression in October was my quick assessment that the greater majority of the Germans I was seeing were either not alive or too young to have been involved with the Nazis.  I saw people of color, gays, and Muslims, mixed in with the Aryan looking Germans Hitler was trying to elevate.  I almost immediately dropped my guard and relaxed. This is a different Germany than the one I visited in 1970.

Emily and I stayed 3 nights in Mannheim, my mother’s hometown. She and 4 of her 5 siblings were born there of Polish immigrants to Germany. It was from Mannheim that she and her mother were deported in October 1940 to Gurs Concentration Camp in France. I would be likely walking in or close to many of her footsteps. 

My mother had always described Mannheim as a pleasant place to grow up in even with her family’s poverty and the creeping anti-Semitism she experienced. Mannheim was an industrial city on the Rhine in southwestern Germany, where BASF, the largest chemical company in the world was founded. The Landenburg banking family, Jews from Mannheim, financed the establishment of BASF.  The actual factory was built in Karslruhe across the Rhine because Mannheim residents feared the pollution. This industrial concentration fueling the local economy that probably attracted immigrants like my grandparents led to Mannheim’s almost total destruction by allied bombing in WW 2.  Germans in Mannheim paid a high price for their allegiance to Hitler.

My first shock was upon leaving the beautiful train station,  Mannheim Haubtbanhof. There in the plaza for thousands to see as they walk by daily was a simple directional road sign: GURS 1170KM.

Mannheim Hauptbanhof - Main Train Station

It was the only directional road sign in the plaza and it probably had a more profound emotional impact on me than all the other memorials I saw.

This was the train station where my mother and grandmother and thousands of other Mannheim Jews were deported.  They took poor Jews, immigrants to Germany like my grandmother, and those Jews who had been German citizens for centuries and leading citizens of the city. During the deportation, all of Mannheim’s remaining Jews were rousted from their homes, told to prepare one suitcase and marched to the Hauptbanhof, their destination unknown. Their German neighbors either saw nothing or said nothing. 

I received a second jolt upon visiting the excellent Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, and saw a painting of a wealthy Jewish citizen of Mannheim.

A bit of history is necessary here. Jews were known to have been one of the earliest immigrants to Germany coming with the Romans in the 4-5 century AD. They had significant communities in the Rhine cities of Worms, Mainz and Speyer in the 11^th century. These three cities, known as the Schum cities, were the epicenter of Ashkenazi (European) Jewish life in the Middle Ages.  Religious law and practice were developed by the rabbi scholars in these three cities. Worms has the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in Europe going back to 1058/59.

http://www.schumcities.com/

Mannheim has had a Jewish population since the 17^th century. Class divided Mannheim’s Jews. There were many professionals: doctors, lawyers, bankers, financiers, professors, factory and department store owners who had been in Germany for generations. Many were very prosperous and some very wealthy. They considered themselves Germans, and were in fact citizens enjoying equal rights until the 1930’s.  Some were proud that they served in the German army during WW 1.  The other group was the working class Jews that included many recent immigrants from Eastern Europe many of whom were poor and not citizens. My grandparents were in this group.  Salomon Elter barely made a living as a shoemaker and my grandmother Leie went door-to-door selling brushes.

Reiss-Engelhorn Museum - Portrait of Helene Hecht

In one of the Reiss-Engelghorn galleries is a large portrait of Helene Hecht, born in 1845. Her husband Felix was a wealthy bank director. They had a palatial home in Mannheim and were patrons of the arts. The caption by the portrait included this:

“Eighty-six year old Helene Hecht is rousted from bed early in the morning on October 22, 1940 and brought to the collection point for deportation to Gurs. She never arrives there.”

My mother, who was 20 years old when she and her mother were deported on that day to Gurs and survived, told me that the wealthy Mannheim Jews were the first to die in Gurs. They were least able to take the shock and horror of deportation and deprivation at Gurs. After all, they were German and leading citizens of Mannheim.

The other memorial to the 2400 Jews from Mannheim that were victims of the Nazis was on their equivalent of Manhattan’s 5^th ave and 34 St. There in the middle of the Mannheim’s main shopping street was a 12’ translucent glass cube.  The cube has the names of Mannheim Jews that were murdered, including my grandparents and uncle Gustav Elter. There is an additional strong irony to this location. On the nearby corner, stood the largest department store in Mannheim, founded and owned by a Jewish citizen of Mannheim. It was damaged during Kristallnacht and stolen from the owner by the Nazis.

Mannheim Memorial to its Jewish Citizens

This memorial was additional proof that the Germans were serious about reconciling their guilt. There can be no reconciliation without the truth. Germans were willing to have the truth out in the open in front of the train station and on their busiest shopping street.   I was moved and this further confirmed that this was not the Germany of 1945 and not even the Germany of 1970 (these memorials and much of their truth telling had not happened in 1970).

My overall impression of Mannheim was that of a cultured, diverse small city that I could live in. It didn’t hurt to see a sign for an upcoming Jethro Tull concert.  Mannheim has long had a Turkish Muslim population at about 10% and I was told that they are well integrated into the city life and culture.

Heidelberg University, about 10 miles from Mannheim is Germany’s oldest university and was founded in 1386. Nils Steffen and his Public History Department collaborated with Theaterwerkstatt Heidelberg to produce the docu-drama play -  Gefluchetet – Unerwunscht- Abgeschoben – Lastige Auslander in der Weimar Republic (Fleeing, Unwelcome – Deported - Undesirable Aliens in the Weimar Republic.)

Theaterwerkstatt Heidelberg - Dramatic Reading Brochure

My grandparents’ story was one of the 4 case histories dramatized to understand and compare Germany’s policies and reactions to large-scale immigration during the Weimar Republic and currently when Germany has allowed in almost 1 million Syrian refugees.

My grandparents Leie and Salomon emigrated to Germany sometime before 1911, when they were married in Worms. They came from Oswiecim and Chrzanow in present day Poland, but during their lives those towns were part of Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  I don’t know the precise reasons they left their homes to come to Germany, but events in the latter part of the 19^th century probably were reasons enough. 

In the neighboring Russian Empire, which includes the balance of present-day Poland, there were numerous vicious pograms throughout the 19^th century.   Thousands of Jews were massacred with the support of the Czarist regime. One of the most infamous of these pogroms was the Kishniev pogroms.

http://www.kishinevpogrom.com/narratives1.html

Jews in Galicia were put on notice. While there weren’t pogroms in Galicia, anti-Semitism was increasing. Galicia was the poorest region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the likely causes of this rising anti-Semitism were feared economic competition, deep seated and historical religious prejudices and political propaganda. The result was that there was a mass emigration of about 237,000 Jews from Galicia during the years 1881-1910. The majority of those Galician Jews went to US and Canada but some, like my grandparents, went to Germany. Millions of Russian Jews came to the US during this period to escape severe anti-Semitism and extreme poverty.

I don’t know what my grandparents did in Germany during the years prior to and after WW 1 except from my grandmother’s letter when she stated that he had served in the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) Army during WW 1.

The Weimar Republic, 1914-1933, followed Germany’s disastrous loss in W.W 1. It was a parliamentary democracy that after the hyperinflation of the early 1920’s and before the world wide depression in 1929 saw a cultural renaissance in art, music, architecture, literature, etc., and liberal social policies such as a increased health insurance coverage and the codification of the right of children to have an education.   Immigration likely continued during this period of the Weimar Republic and with it the corresponding backlash highlighted in the play featuring my grandparents’ story.

During the Weimar Republic, populist sentiments against immigrants,mostly from Eastern Europe, were almost identical to what is heard in the US today regarding immigrants.

They are culturally different from us and will never integrate into our society.

They are taking our jobs.

They drain our social services.

They are causing crime.

They are bringing disease.

It’s likely that immigrants to Germany, like my grandparents, had little protection under the law.  They had a difficult time with legal pathways to citizenship even after living there for decades, serving in the military, and raising families in Germany. Deportation for the slightest offenses was a continual threat. My grandfather’s imminent deportation was the threat driving my grandmother to plea for clemency to the minister of Baden (this letter is linked on post 3). This was the core of my family’s story so well done by the Heidelberg actors, dramatically reading powerful historical documents. 

Here is a trailer for the performance.  You can get an excellent feel for the entire production. My grandmother’s story starts at 3:49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNs_Qu22408

This is the entire performance. Unfortunately, the play and trailer are in German, although we are working with the theatre company to include English subtitles in the near future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBFwjhK-qKk&feature=youtu.be

I was deeply moved by the performance. My grandparents, otherwise 2 anonymous casualties of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, have evaded obscurity. Their story has been told with dignity and respect.

An 80+ year family mystery is gradually solved.

None of my grand parents were alive by the time I was born. That has driven me more to want to know more about my family history. From my parents, I knew the birthplaces of my two grandmothers and paternal grandfather.  Tragically, I knew that my two grandmothers were murdered in Auschwitz. My paternal grandfather died anonymously fighting for the Austro-Hungarian Army in the one of the unknown battlefields of Europe in WW 1. My maternal grandfather’s birthplace and place of death were both mysteries.

My mother had an extraordinary memory but she knew little about her parents’ past because they were both orphaned at an early age. She knew her mother Leie’s birthplace, Oswiecim, Poland, but as far as her father Salomon’s birthplace, all she knew was that it was a town that sounded like Janov and it was in Poland. When I tried to find that town in Poland, there were about 6 towns or cities that included Janov in their names. My mother also didn’t know what happened after her father left Germany for Italy before WW 2 started.

About three months ago, I finally decided to commit to researching what happened to him.  Then, out of the clear blue, I got a very surprising email. The subject heading of:  Your grandfather Leopold (his German name) Elter caught my attention instantly. Nobody on earth other than my relatives knew that I had a connection to this person. I quickly scanned the end of the email to determine who sent this and found it signed by Nils Steffen – Public History – University of Heidelberg. The email is below:

Dear Mr. Polak,


This is my third attempt to get in contact with you. Before I tried it via HHRC and Facebook, but I was not successful. Maybe this time? That would be great!

Currently I'm working at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. I am preparing a teaching project with the students at the History Department named "Fled, unwanted, deported - 'undesirable aliens' in Weimar Republic". At our regional archives I found the case file of Salomon Leopold Elter (* 10/10/1885). If my research is correct, he was the father of Henriette (Henni) Sara Elter (*07/21/1920, Mannheim) – your mother.

The ambition of this project is to reconstruct the ‚system’ of German thinking on migrants (particularly Jews from Eastern Europe, because this was the biggest group) in the time of the first democratic period in Germany (1920s). Furthermore we try to research individual biographies of those people who came to Germany and had to leave again by expulsion. Together with my students I do some research in the regional archives. In cooperation with a theater company in Heidelberg we will try to let those found archival files ‚speak’ on the stage. So our goal is a scenic reading for the public in October together with a companion volume to publish some sources and case files.

I don’t know if you follow the news from Europe/Germany about the fled people from Syria. Many refugees came to Germany and their arrival arouses fears of „foreign domination“ in some parts of the society.  Even a new right-wing party, the AFD (alternative for Germany) was founded and is grewing fast with populist phrases about some Muslim danger, closing borders, and expulsion. I don’t have to tell you with your family history, that there are many similarities with the pre-Nazi era in Germany. The examination of the past on the stage may help to scrutinize and question the actual situation.

To cut that long story short, I want to ask you, if you are interested in those (very few) documents on the expulsion of your grandfather? I could send them to you. Furthermore I’d like to ask if you have some more information (or documents, photos) on your grandfather and his family situation in Mannheim. I already found the short memory report of your mother and the interview of your uncle Simon for the Shoah Foundation from 1996. And a few days ago we found out, that in Karlsruhe there many files of your family's claims on reparation after 1945.

Sending best regards across the ocean

Nils Steffen


_____ 

Nils Steffen, M.A. 
Akademischer Mitarbeiter 
Angewandte Geschichte – Public History 

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 
Historisches Seminar 
Grabengasse 3-5 
D-69117 Heidelberg 



You’re probably wondering how Nils found me. The Internet! During his research he uncovered documents that also involved my mother. He simply Googled my mother’s name and he was directed to a memorial story written about my mother in the retirement home (The Atrium in Portland, ME) newsletter where she lived until she died last year at the age of 94. There was a relatively easy connection from that story to me.

I was stunned and what followed was an extraordinary trove of documents about my grandparents and mother, some of them powerfully emotional that finally unlocked most of the mysteries of my grandfather Salomon’s past.

The most basic history I learned was that my grandfather was born in Chrzanov, (pronounced Janov), Poland in 1885. As soon as I found out this information I checked www.ancestry.com and within two clicks I found my grandparents’ wedding certificate from 1911 in Worms, Germany. (It had obviously been there all this time but I never searched). This was extremely significant because Chrzanov is only about 10 miles from my grandmother’s birthplace of Oswiecim. Evidently they had met in Poland and immigrated together to Germany. I don’t know why they left Poland but I can assume that it was for economic and safety reasons.  I’ll provide more details about that story in my next post.

The documents confirmed some of my mother’s oral history that my grandfather left Germany for Italy in the mid 1930’s. He wound up in a series of concentration camps in Italy when WW 2 started.  For unique cultural reasons, the Italians were fundamentally not as anti-Semitic as other European countries like France, Poland, and certainly Germany. Mussolini, while aligned with Hitler, was not interested in murdering his Italian Jewish citizens, some of who had been in Italy 2000 years. He was pressured to arrest and incarcerate them in concentration camps.  These were not death camps, but many in these camps were eventually sent to the death camps including Auschwitz.

So far the documentation available indicates that my grandfather Salomon was shot and killed somewhere near Macerata, Italy towards the end of the war. Macerata, Italy is near the Adriatic ports that would have been the best place to get out of Italy by sea. My mother’s oral history is that her father had been trying unsuccessfully to go by ship from Italy to Palestine.  I hope to be able to find out more details now that I have clear reference points.

The most powerful document allowed me to actually  “hear” my grandmother Leie’s voice and inner strength.  My pregnant grandmother Leie, caring for 4 children had the chutzpah to directly advocate for her husband. It’s likely that she only spoke Yiddish, and not German. Nils told me that this was extremely unusual and that typically only lawyers would do this kind of advocacy at the State Ministry. This amazing letter is found at the link below. You may need to paste the address in your browser.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bODT_guGE1zxIMwl-OT-OCZPVKXxbN-4BKhIzlK1eJw/edit?usp=sharing   

If you can't access this document through Google Docs, let me know and I'll email it to you.         

Some of the details of this document again corroborated my mother’s oral history.  This 1921 document was a transcribed powerfully emotional testimony that my grandmother Leie provided to the minister of the State of Baden. My grandfather had innocently (as my mother remembered) followed a communist demonstration during the Mannheim riots of 1918-9. This was during a particularly tumultuous period after Germany lost WW 1 and there was a power struggle including from communists.

My grandfather was arrested and imprisoned for 5 months and evidently suffered some kind of emotional breakdown that my grandmother referenced.  Although they were planning to deport him, apparently her emotional appeal was successful and my grandfather was not deported at that time.

For reasons still unknown to our family, he did leave his family and went to Italy during the mid 1930’s. My mother did tell me in her oral history that he then tried coming back to Germany to visit his family, although he did it illegally and was caught by the authorities and warned that if he returned (even with his family in Germany) he would be imprisoned. That was the last time my mother and her family saw him.

I visited Mannheim Germany (my mother’s birthplace) in 1970 on a backpacking trip but felt extremely uncomfortable there at the time. There were still too many living Nazis who had willingly directed and participated in the Genocide of my family members and millions of other Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses and political enemies.

I was intensely interested in how Germany had changed in 46 years; in my mother’s hometown of Mannheim; my grandparents’ history and their immigrant story, that I decided to attend one of the presentations of the play at the University of Heidelberg on Sunday, October 16 with my wife Emily and my brother Raymond.  

The next post will highlight our recent trip to Germany and the docu-drama play at the University of Heidelberg focusing on my grandparents’ story.

Post-war Europe was devastated economically and socially and for many Jews who survived the Holocaust, it was not a friendly place.  Surviving Jews struggled to get out of Europe and still faced many hurdles.  Palestine was difficult to enter because Britain controlled it and established blockades to keep immigrants out until Israel's independence in 1948. DP (displaced person) camps, some run by the American government, were established in Austria, Germany, Italy and other countries to house many of the millions of war refugees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camp.

Many of these “displaced persons” were Jewish concentration camp survivors who wound up behind barbed wire and faced harsh conditions and continuing challenges finding countries that would accept them. President Eisenhower relieved General Patton of his command largely because of his indifference and the squalid conditions at the camps he commanded. The US allowed some immigration of these refugees but there was considerable Congressional opposition to those coming from central and Eastern Europe and to Jews.  This was due to the growing communist scare and ongoing anti-Semitism.

Six months after I was born, my parents had been in France long enough to qualify to become naturalized citizens. My mother, of course, was a forced immigrant to France because of her deportation by the Germans to Gurs, a French concentration camp.  My father certainly paid his dues to France by serving in the French Foreign Legion and  his incarceration as a POW. My grandmother was sent to her death in Auschwitz by the French Vichy government and SNCF (French National Railways).  Our parents' citizenship then qualified my brother and I to become French citizens. My birth (and my brother’s) in France did not automatically grant us citizenship as birthright citizenship does in the US.  Even with French citizenship, my parents still always considered themselves refugees and wanted to leave Europe.

My father had family in New York and wanted to immigrate to the US, which was enjoying a post war economic boom. Of course to many Europeans at the time, US streets were still “paved with gold.”  He initiated the process of obtaining a permanent entrance visa from the American Consulate in Paris. Unfortunately, he encountered one of America’s many discriminatory immigration policies. 

What follows are highlights of America’s immigration laws and is not a comprehensive accounting.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first law to target a specific ethnic group and was not repealed until 1943.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

In 1924 and again in 1952, the US passed immigration laws limiting immigration from Eastern Europe (and Southern Europe).  The 1952 law abolished racial restrictions but still permitted quotas for nationalities and regions, thus still allowing discriminatory immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1952

The rationale for these laws in public and congressional debates is almost identical to the current debates. These immigrants are different; they are not assimilating; they will be a burden; and they are a threat to our jobs.  I believe that these laws were fundamentally racially based, as the underlying concern was the threat to White America. It’s ironic that the definition of “White” has been constantly changing. Southern Europeans, including Italians, Greeks and Spaniards were at one time not considered white enough and their immigration to the US was restricted.

Countries, including Romania where my father was born, that had been terribly oppressed and conquered by both the Germans and Russians, had limits on their citizens entering the US.   The Russians and Germans each murdered millions of civilians in Eastern Europe from the 1930's - 1940's.  

My father was repeatedly rejected for family visas to the US until a friend of his suggested that he re-apply under my mother’s German birthplace.  American immigration policies post-WW 2  were much more open to German immigrants, including Nazis, than to Eastern European immigrants. Even though she was never a German citizen, our family was able to obtain visas to come to the US under the German quota.  (American immigration policies were based on country of birth-not citizenship)

We arrived in New York by boat on the SS Flandre after a stormy voyage in December of 1953. 

SS Flandre

Ellis Island was no longer operational and we landed somewhere on Manhattan’s west side. We must have passed the Statue of Liberty like countless refugees and immigrants before us, but I have no memory of that.

Our first home was provided by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) at their dormitory on Lafayette St. near Cooper Square in Manhattan. Today that dormitory is the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. HIAS no longer focuses on Jewish immigration and its mission is now to rescue "people whose lives are in danger for being who they are."
http://www.hias.org/

Our first home in US - HIAS - now Joseph Papp Public Theatre

Our family spent a few weeks at the HIAS dormitory until we moved to our first apartment on Throop Ave in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. After about 6 months we moved to Williams Ave in the East New York section of Brooklyn and I attended PS 174 from Kindergarten through 5^th grade.  

Polak Family - Brooklyn, NY - pre-chic era - circa 1956

My family arrived in the US with about $300.  Except for the brief support from HIAS, there were no other government services available to us as immigrants. We were on our own. My father worked in New Jersey for Manischewitz making matzos, and my mother worked in a Brooklyn factory sewing labels into sweaters on a piece work basis. Her working conditions improved significantly when she joined the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and was able to get benefits including an hourly wage and health insurance. 

East New York was a diverse working class neighborhood.  My elementary school was excellent. In NYC, public schools were funded through broad five borough taxation. There was a powerfully strong and effective tradition of immigrant and working class children quickly moving up the economic and educational ladder due to public financial commitment to education. Far Rockaway HS, the local public school I attended, has 3 nobel laureates among its alumni. The support for public education that my brother and I benefitted from extended to free college for both us in the City University of New York. My parents had not even gone to high school and as first generation Americans we both graduated from college (and graduate schools).

I learned English very quickly but many of the children I played with taunted me because I was an immigrant.  These children were from families likely one or two generations away from being immigrants themselves.

In 1960, my family had been in the US long enough to qualify and we became naturalized American citizens. I went from being stateless at birth to having dual citizenship. This is allowed under US law. My parents, like current applicants for American citizenship, had to pass a civics test.  It’s likely that many native-born Americans would not be able to pass this test.

https://my.uscis.gov/en/prep/test/civics/view

In 2004, with France part of the European Union, my French citizenship allowed me to reside and work in EU member states. To date, I have not taken advantage of that. 

Dual citizenship is psychically critical for me. I can’t forget how many Jews struggled to get out of Europe during WW 2 but were turned away from all countries, including the US.  Although it’s not entirely rational, if I ever needed to flee I want as many doors open to me as possible. 

The US did not respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis of European Jews and only allowed 132,000 Jews into the US between 1933 and 1945. The lack of a suitable empathic response to the Jewish refugee crisis was the result of a nasty strain of anti-Semitism that has continued to exist in the US. Even European children at ultimate peril from Germany’s genocide of Jews were not immune to American anti-Semitism.  When a special exception was proposed to allow them into the US, the wife of the US Commissioner of Immigration remarked at a cocktail party: “20,000 children would all soon grow up to be 20,000 ugly adults.” (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).

One of the most shameful acts of FDR’s administration was the turning away of the ship St. Louis with 908 Jewish refugees fleeing Germany in 1939. They were originally going to be allowed into Cuba, but when Cuba denied them entrance as they moored in Havana Harbor, they pleaded with the US government to be allowed into America. They were denied refuge and the boat turned around and went back to Europe where approximately one quarter of those aboard was murdered in Nazi death camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis