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.