The Warburgs

by Ron Chernow

  CHAPTER 33

  ––

  Orphans of the Storm

  The bond between Max and Eric deepened during their final uncertain days in Germany. Eric had been his father’s confidant, providing emotional support, while harboring a pessimistic outlook. He believed that the Nazis, through the Autobahnen and public-works projects, had inspired unwavering mass enthusiasm. While he had friends in the Resistance—three would be executed before the war ended—he thought Hitler too tightly guarded for an assassination attempt, which might only provoke brutal reprisals. If more realistic than his father, Eric shared the Warburg feeling of immunity to extreme danger and didn’t sufficiently credit the Nazis’ warlike intentions.

  Eric was better suited to the smooth arts of diplomacy than to the rough-and-tumble of confrontation. In the early 1930s, he was active in the Anglo-German Association, the Friends of the United States, and other groups that promoted international harmony. He passed through the Third Reich with his own cheerful resilience. “I do not envy him his life,” Eddie Warburg said of him in 1938, “but I do envy him his real nobility of character which enables him to carry on with such grace and charm.”1

  In part, Eric weathered the persecution through travel, including twice-yearly trips to America to establish residency there. In 1936, he traveled aboard the zeppelin Hindenburg, which spectacularly exploded the next year. He often sailed to Scandinavia aboard the Kong Bele with Gisi, aristocratic girlfriends, and Alain de Rothschild. In the summer of 1938, Eric made a memorable last trip that showed that the boat no longer protected him from harassment. He was about to sail one day when the Gestapo swarmed aboard. Under strict foreign exchange rules, nobody in Germany could carry more than ten marks aboard a ship. With dread, Eric realized that he had a verboten twenty-mark note stashed in his pocket. While the Gestapo slashed open everything from sails to food cans, Eric squeezed the note into a tiny ball then popped it overboard. As secret police prowled the decks, Eric prayed that the crumpled, bobbing bill wouldn’t suddenly unfold and declare his crime. By this point, he was already preparing to depart for America and planned to leave his boat behind in a Danish harbor.

  For the Warburgs, it was a summer of atrocious news and tender farewells. The Nazis now required all Jews to carry special identity cards with the middle name “Israel” added to male names and “Sara” to female names in official documents. Yet the Warburgs still found people who preserved a semblance of civility amid the darkness. When Eric said good-bye to a family friend, Cäcilie von Klinggräff, she led him to an enormous boulder on her property, dragged there by twenty horses from the Pinnow-Chemnitz border at the end of World War I. On this boulder were inscribed two Biblical words to commemorate the missing soldiers: “We wait.” These words, the old woman said, now applied to Eric.2

  The Warburgs were buoyed by these people who resisted Nazi propaganda and represented the good, enduring side of German culture. For instance, on the day Hitler seized power, Max’s close friend, Paul Reusch, head of the Good Hope Steel Company, had installed a stone bench in his park bearing the Greek motto that whoever made a pact with tyrants would perish.3 The Warburgs never believed that the human spark entirely died among the German people, and this gave them hope of a renewal someday.

  The family began shutting down Kösterberg. The authorities informed them that they had to keep one house full of furniture, but could ship the rest elsewhere. The half-Jewish Warburg gardener, Else Hoffa, selected the best pieces, then crammed all the worst junk into one house. Later, she went to England and became chief gardener for an English lord. In late August 1938, Max, Alice, and Gisela sailed to New York, expecting to return in late autumn. Even amid unspeakable crimes, Max couldn’t cut the emotional cord with Germany. Fritz, who had remained in Germany from loyalty to Max, said his brother’s “attachment to Hamburg and Germany was still so strong, that he by no means ruled out a return to Germany ‘after Hitler.’ ”4 In New York, Max planned to attend a conference on refugee aid and appeal to the Joint for extra money for German-Jewish emigration. He had no idea that his trip would lengthen into permanent exile or that he would never set eyes on Germany again.

  ——

  Alexandra Danilova in Swan Lake, circa 1938. (Private collection of Alexandra Danilova)

  In Berlin, Gisi had distributed money for exit permits and she didn’t want to emigrate as long as distraught Jews were still trapped there. Since her passport had been taken away, Max got her another by telling Hamburg officials that she wanted to raise money abroad for Jewish emigration—an idea that still attracted the Nazis. “I was the only German Jewess who cried when she got her passport because I didn’t want to leave,” she said.5

  On August 23, 1938, Eric left Kösterberg and his trusty Newfoundland dog, Teddy, without knowing whether he would see, Germany again. He made a short trip to Stockholm to say good-bye to Fritz and Anna Beata then traveled to New York. On September 29, 1938, he became a naturalized citizen after only ten days in America, thanks to the residence stamp having been placed in his passport in the 1920s. Since Max and Alice were now in New York on a visitors’ visa, that accident saved their lives.

  While they were in New York, Der Stürmer heaped more calumnies on the family in a vicious tirade entitled, “The Jewish Warburgs in the World War.” The readers again learned that Paul had forged the Federal Reserve Board expressly to wage war against Germany and that he and Max had headed their respective war staffs. “They led them in the interest of their money and in the interest of the Jewish race.” The paper blamed the Warburgs for killing thirteen million non-Jews in the war. Felix was posthumously dragged in as a stealthy intermediary. “Very probably he played the most dangerous role of the three Warburgs,” the author speculated. He resurrected the shade of Jacob Schiff, reporting him boasting to the New York Stock Exchange during the war, “The war will turn out, as it will, but we Jews have won the entire world.” Not only did Schiff mastermind the Russian Revolution, but Kuhn, Loeb was rewarded with exclusive rights to sell the Romanoff jewels.6 This violent rhetoric, of course, projected the sadistic impulses of the Nazis themselves.

  In early November, a seventeen-year-old Jewish student murdered a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, to avenge the deportation of his parents and other Polish Jews. This unleashed Kristallnacht on the night of November 9, 1938, a dress rehearsal for the Final Solution. The SS herded twenty thousand Jews into concentration camps. Among the hundreds of synagogues burned was Hamburg’s Grindelhof, built partly at the behest of Moritz Warburg with large sums from Felix. In general, the pogrom wasn’t popular in Hamburg. “The Nazis sent troops there from Berlin,” recalled Gisela, “because they were afraid the locals wouldn’t destroy enough synagogues.”7 Even though ninety-one Jews were killed, the Nazis demanded that the Jews pay one billion marks in damages for Rath’s death and another 250 million marks to repair streetlamps and storefronts! It was now that Himmler began to organize the bureaucratic machinery that would annihilate Jews instead of simply expelling them.

  The night of shattered glass ended Max’s hopes. Frieda watched him absorb the dreadful news. “I remember how … he turned to his son, Eric, in my sitting-room and said, ‘Now it’s finished. Will you get us into Canada, so that we can re-enter on a quota?’ ”8 Dr. Kurt Sieveking cabled from Hamburg, warning Max that he faced imprisonment if he set foot on German soil. Kristallnacht made Max realize that he and his family were now castaways, indefinitely marooned in America.

  Eric took Max and Alice to Toronto so that they could re-enter the United States as parents of an American citizen under a preferential quota. It was a fantastic stroke of luck for them, since the United States sifted through three hundred thousand applications and FDR still refused to loosen the restrictive quota system. Deeply grateful to Eric, Max teased him that it was the one time he had made himself useful. He wished to become a U.S. citizen, he said, so he could convert Eric into a second-generation American.9

  Gisi, twenty-
six, couldn’t accept that she could no longer fight in Berlin, that the struggle had ended in defeat. “I was homesick for Germany, for the trench spirit in Youth Aliyah,” she said.10 She was about to return to Germany when Kristallnacht occurred. To relieve her frustrated energies, she made a transcontinental fund-raising trip for Youth Aliyah.

  With Kristallnacht, the terror struck more directly at well-to-do Jews left in Germany. The Gestapo rounded up affluent Jews to extort money from them. Some seven hundred Jews were crowded into a Gestapo detention center at Fuhlsbüttel, outside Hamburg, including Fritz Warburg. As longtime chairman of the Jewish Hospital, he had returned from Stockholm a few days earlier to deal with the hospital’s grave financial straits. Founded in 1839 by Salomon Heine (the poet’s uncle) it was a pet Warburg charity, which the Nazis for years had tried to shut down. As Jews evacuated Germany, the hospital labored under heavy debts and needed constant Warburg bailouts. By late September 1938, the medical situation grew dire, as the government ousted Jewish doctors from general practice. Informed that authorities planned to cast out hospital patients in a week, Fritz returned to Hamburg to bargain for an extension. He was grabbed at the airport on his way back to Sweden.

  Always a sickly, wheezing, torpid man, Fritz fainted at the Fuhlsbüttel prison after standing for ten hours in a packed cell. At first, he shared a single room with seven other people. When the others were all released within days, Fritz knew the Nazis meditated special plans for him. Luckily, Fritz was warm and garrulous and got on famously with the turnkey, who asked if he could bring him a companion. Fritz mentioned a Dr. Cohn, then shaving the heads of some old prisoners. The obliging turnkey then strode through the prison, shouting in a stentorian voice, “Dr. Cohn, please, as company for Dr. Warburg!”11 Henceforth, the turnkey brought Fritz a new cellmate each day. As a Jewish community leader, Fritz felt obligated to keep up morale and he regaled the other inmates with entertaining stories or tales of the prophets. To distract them, he also analyzed their handwriting and formed such close friendships that he later sent many prisoners “Care” packages from Sweden.

  During his prison months, Fritz remained in the agonizing position of being detained with his passport revoked. He escaped from Germany through the intercession of Baron Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler, who came from an old-line Christian banking house in Hamburg. In mid-April, the baron secured an appointment at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin with a man named Wolff, adjutant to Police Chief Himmler. While the baron sat there, Wolff discussed Fritz’s case with Himmler’s lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich. Berenberg-Gossler formed the distinct impression that the Nazis planned to exploit Fritz as a pawn in the event of an international incident. The Gestapo proposed a deal: They would let Fritz go if he ransomed a large number of poor Jews into Sweden. A week later, the baron told Wolff that Fritz would furnish the wherewithal for one hundred Jewish children and poor adults to depart. After more cloak-and-dagger meetings, the Gestapo informed Fritz on May 6, 1939, that he could claim his passport. After a curious delay of three days—he unaccountably dawdled—Fritz and Anna left for Sweden on May 10.

  They found it miraculous to be back in their Stockholm flat. “Yes, it’s really true, we’re really here,” Anna wrote her daughter. “I still can hardly believe it, but it’s beau-u-u-ti-ful!”12 She praised Fritz’s unselfish courage during the crisis. Anna Beata felt they had done enough for the community inside Germany and could now, with a clear conscience, help from abroad. The Jewish Hospital turned out to be beyond redemption. The Jewish population was shrinking and gentile patients dared not enter. The hospital couldn’t continue this way and the Hamburg government took it over. During the Final Solution, the Nazis would use it for military sick bays. When they admitted Jewish patients, they would poison them with sleeping pills.

  Like Aby, but quite unlike his other brothers, Fritz was never drawn to the speed, dash, and dynamism of America. Since his wife was Swedish, they adopted Stockholm as their new home. An avid conversationalist, Fritz relished the café and street life and the rich selection of movie theaters and Jewish lectures. Not only did Anna Beata resume her kindergarten work, but their daughter, Eva, brought along to Sweden her kindergarten children. Keen to emigrate to Palestine, Eva stayed in Sweden at the express wish of Henrietta Szold of Youth Aliyah and became the group’s Swedish representative. In the end, she joined her pupils in Israel.

  Although Max and Fritz escaped with families intact, they had made no provision for their sister, Louise, Dr. Derenberg’s widow. Max claimed that Louise couldn’t overcome her attachment to Germany and her friends. Louise’s children, however, felt that Max encouraged her to stay, but then neglected his brotherly duty. After Kristallnacht, it fell to César Domela—the Dutch, avant-garde artist who had married Louise’s daughter, Ruth—to slip into Germany and bring out his mother-in-law. In his concern for the general weal, Max sometimes had a funny way of overlooking specific cases close at hand. There was some bitterness among Louise’s children that Max had urged his sister to stay in Germany while knowing that he himself had the option of someday entering the United States through Eric.

  —

  The Warburgs, who had been rooted to Germany for centuries, now returned to the wandering, nomadic life of Diaspora Jews. Whether in England, Sweden, or America, they were again strangers and sojourners in the land. They didn’t lapse into brooding or self-pity but hit the ground running. They had lost wealth, power, and position, but not their brains, talents, connections, and self-confidence. Like royalty in exile, they still felt responsible for German Jews.

  By stirring the conscience of the British government, Kristallnacht at least ended up saving thousands of Jewish children. A central catalyst was Lola Hahn-Warburg, who continued to evolve from beguiling society hostess into a dedicated political activist. Max warned people, “The first time that you meet my daughter, she will behave like a lady, the next time she will get on your nerves with her noble social matters.”13 Still contending with a new language and homeland, she threw herself into refugee activities, working in a building near Russell Square with sister Anita. In late November 1938, she accompanied a delegation to the Home Office to plead for persecuted German-Jewish children. Lola provided moving anecdotes of their suffering. That night, Sir Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, told the House of Commons that the British government would waive the usual visa requirements for these children and admit them without passports. From the British standpoint, this reflected compassionate statesmanship and practical politics. By receiving more Jews into Britain, the government hoped to lighten the dangerous population pressures building up in Palestine.

  By December, the first children began to arrive in England from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. They came clutching a single suitcase and ten marks apiece. Many were orphans or had parents in concentration camps. In London, some experienced fresh indignities as prospective foster parents fussed over selections. “It was like a cattle market,” said Gisi. “The blond and blue-eyed little darlings were taken. The Jewish-looking ones were not.”14 Suicides occurred among the more seriously depressed children.

  Heading the welfare section of this Refugee Children’s Movement, as it was eventually called, Lola received the most intractable cases. Strong-willed, domineering, but with a warmly magical attraction for young people, she was perfect for the job. She had an instinct for dealing with troubled youth. One day, a delinquent barged into her office. As she recalled, “When I was behind my desk, he jumped up suddenly, took out a knife and cut the telephone wire. Then he opened the window and started climbing out on the ledge. I tried to remain very calm. I said to him, “I’m very unwell. I have bad kidney trouble. It is so cold in here with the window open. Will you please come back into the office?”15 The boy responded. Lola ended up driving him to the hospital then placing him in a special home. Another time, a young girl was struck mute by mental illness. Lola kept bringing her flowers in the hospital and sitting quietly by her. Years later, the form
er patient, now a healthy young woman, tracked her down and said, “I shall never forget your visits.”16 People became passionately attached to Lola and accepted her overbearing side as part of the package.

  At first, it was hard for Lola to operate in a world where the Warburg name didn’t command instant respect or even recognition. She had to cope with the hostility that often greeted German accents—an excruciating experience for victims of Nazi oppression. (These chilly relations led Lola’s sister, Anita, to help Jewish refugees to find volunteer work with British citizens through the All Nations Volunteer League, which secured six thousand posts.) In one North Wales town, Lola’s accent was deemed so sinister that she attracted an unwanted police escort. She succeeded in her work despite these impediments. The Children’s Transport movement was a magnificent achievement that had snatched ten thousand children from the gas chambers by the time it ended in August 1939. It rescued one third of all Jewish children who escaped the Nazis. Half the Jewish children in Germany were never to emerge again.