When Time Stopped

by Ariana Neumann

  These were my grandparents’ papers, a mass of them, which they had deemed important enough to guard in a safe. Against all odds, they were now in my hands. Some were fragments, some had lost any trace of ink or writing. A snapshot of their lives, catapulted across the distance of place and time. Many of the documents delineate a tedious paper trail of a normal life, bank statements, share certificates, newspaper clippings. But there too, among the administrative familiarity, falls the shadow.

  In between the carefully restored papers, protected by the crisp white wrapping, lay their applications for immigrant visas to the U.S. That winter they had not just been planning the holidays. They had not just been laughing in Libčice. Hans, who was seventeen at the time, had submitted his papers to the American consulate in Prague on December 23, 1938. Otto, Ella, Lotar, and Zdenka had handed in their applications two weeks later, on January 7, 1939. The entire process had been preserved in Michal’s safe. Envelopes addressed to the Hon. John H. Bruins, American consul in Prague, letters from U.S. banks and employers in Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Michigan, signed and notarized, certifying that Victor owned a house, had a job, and enough funds in the Bank of Detroit to support his European family. Documents with the United States of America seal, dated 1936 and 1938, set out the application rules for those seeking visas as students, as tourists, as immigrants, as refugees.

  In every faded, water-stained document bearing the heading U.S. State Department, one can clearly see handwritten circles or underlinings in red pen, again and again, around one term: Non-Quota Immigration. By the end of June 1939, some 309,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had applied for visas in this way and awaited a reply. America had established quotas in the 1920s to curb immigration from people deemed undesirable. Many, like the Neumanns, faced a portcullis of unyielding arithmetic. Only 25,000 visas per year would be made available under the quota. These three words, non-quota immigration, were the simple bolt that had slid shut for my grandparents behind the last door that led to safety.

  Now I knew beyond any doubt. Even the wild waters of the river flooding the town in 2002 had not destroyed the evidence that Otto and Ella had kept locked in the basement safe. Their laughter in Libčice was real, but so too must have been their fear. Of course, they did not know how far it would go, but they knew enough. They dreaded it enough to want to leave behind the life they had built. All four of them tried to get out. But they could not. There was a quota. The U.S. had restrictions on immigrants, on refugees, and specifically on Jews. There was a slim chance that they would fall within the quota and be allowed to migrate, but it was dwindling. So it was despite the fear of what might be coming, and despite the frail hope that they might be allowed to move to America, that they continued to focus on their daily lives.

  The first piece of evidence that the family was trying to work the system, to somehow evade the scourge of anti-Semitism boiling up across Europe, comes from January 1939. Lotar and Ella were baptized by Josef Fiala, a priest at the Basilica of St. James, in the center of Prague’s Old Town. The priest was a friend of Lotar and Zdenka and was eager to help the family. I now know that Fiala aided many and even risked death by providing shelter to a Jewish man during the war. After Ella and Lotar, Hans followed suit and was baptized on March 24, 1939, soon after he turned eighteen. But not Otto; he had refused. “I would rather listen to Gandhi’s words than the advice of any rabbi or priest,” he had declared. He never stated a religious affiliation on any official document. On each form that I have found in archives, that line was left blank. I will never know whether this was out of some ideological conviction or fear of discrimination. What I understand from the stories and documents is that Otto believed that religious institutions and zealousness too often brought out the worst in people.

  In any case, baptisms were futile as, for the Nazis, Judaism was not a choice but a “race” determined by your grandparents. What you believed or practiced did not matter; what was important was your genetic makeup. The Nuremberg Laws had provided a definition that enabled persecution. Anyone who belonged to the Jewish community or was married to a Jew fell within the parameters if they had at least two Jewish grandparents. People who were not registered in the community or had intermarried needed to have three Jewish grandparents. With four Jewish grandparents, all the Neumanns clearly fit the definition.

  And on March 15, 1939, the thunder finally became a storm. As the day dawned at five a.m., Prague radio broadcast a message from the Czechoslovakian president:

  The German army infantry and aircraft are beginning the occupation of territory of the Republic at six a.m. today. Their advances must nowhere be resisted. The slightest resistance will cause unforeseen consequences and lead to the intervention becoming utterly brutal. Prague will be occupied at 6:30 a.m.

  CHAPTER 4 A New Reality

  On March 16, 1939, a triumphant Adolf Hitler was photographed waving from the alcove window of the castle that sits atop Prague and that had filled Kafka with dread thirty years prior. Czechoslovakia, the führer proclaimed, had ceased to exist. Its territories had been divided into the Slovak Republic and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Prague was the capital of the German-administered Protectorate, and this was all part of the Nazi realm, the Reich.

  By then, Lotar had long since abandoned any dreams of drama school. In the autumn of 1936, just as his father had wanted, he started to study chemical engineering at the Czech Technical College. One morning at the end of March 1939, he walked into his classroom and found an envelope addressed to Der Jude Lotar Neumann. Inside was a letter informing him that he must leave the school. It was not an official note—the decree that banned Jews from schools and universities did not come until a few months later—but it was enough for Lotar to feel threatened. Halfway through his degree, he stopped attending his lessons and started work in the relative safety of the family’s paint factory. Otto had been left alone at the helm of Montana when his brother Richard had received his visa and moved to the U.S. earlier that year. Lotar’s presence at the factory provided Otto with another much needed and trustworthy pair of hands. It also meant that Lotar was receiving a salary, which gave him the added momentum to ask Zdenka to marry him.

  Months passed before Zdenka mentioned the engagement to her family. Her family had told her over and over that it was madness to date a Jew. She was beautiful, educated, rich. She could have her pick of anyone in Europe.

  “How is it possible?” Zdenka’s cousin related that her father had exclaimed in despair. “With all the boys who like her, why would she choose to be with a Jew?”

  It was not that Zdenka’s family was anti-Semitic. They had met and even liked the Neumanns. Her mother adored Lotar, who would visit her every week, always bring her a bouquet of violets and show her his photographs and make her laugh. But as charming as he was, this was her eldest daughter, and times were difficult enough for everyone. Zdenka’s mother had tried to reason with her: “He needs friends, Zdenka, not love. You both have to use your heads, especially now, with all that is going on. If you really want to help him and his family, you can do more as a friend.”

  The family folklore is that even her grandmother, who constantly championed Zdenka’s independent spirit, had on this occasion been stern: “In these awful times, it would be folly to be led by one’s heart.”

  Zdenka had no doubt that her family would be opposed to the marriage, and her instincts, as usual, were correct. She and Lotar therefore arranged it all quietly. It was about being together; they had never wanted a big affair. They met with the friendly priest at the Basilica of St. James, who once more agreed to help. On hearing the news, Otto had been dismissive, while Ella laughed and wept with joy—she had expected it all along. Despite Lotar’s protestations, Zdenka had thought it best not to inform her father about the wedding at all. She waited until the last minute to tell her mother—the Saturday morning of the wedding itself, once her father had left for their country house in Řevnice. Humming with fear a
nd excitement, she stormed into her mother’s room with the news. Her mother almost fainted with shock. Zdenka had not given her enough time, she said, and she could not possibly attend the ceremony. And when Zdenka told her grandmother, who at all times was supportive and loving, the reaction was similar. She also could not attend the ceremony, she said, not if Zdenka’s parents were not there. But as she cried with her granddaughter, she yielded and offered to host a large celebratory dinner in her house at 20 Podskalská Street that evening. She immediately enlisted her maids, Růžena and Anežka, to make preparations and then rushed to Šafařík, the confectioner downstairs, where she bought half of their display of desserts and cakes.

  And so it was that on Saturday afternoon, May 12, 1939, at the Basilica of St. James in the center of an occupied Prague, Lotar and Zdenka became husband and wife. The Neumann family and Zdenka’s sister, Marie, accompanied them. They were married by Josef Fiala, who had, a few months prior, baptized Lotar, Ella, and Hans. That evening there was an elegant party attended by friends and some family from both sides. Zdenka’s mother and sister joined them at the dinner after all. Everyone close to the couple was there except Zdenka’s father, who had been told what was happening over the telephone and had refused to return from the countryside.

  Lotar and Zdenka at the dinner after their wedding, May 12, 1939

  Every account of the day suggests that the new couple exuded such happiness that it suffused all those around them. For all those present, Zdenka and Lotar’s love was so evident that no one that evening even entertained the thought that it was insane. It was obvious, when you saw how they looked at each other, that they belonged together.

  Nevertheless, the torrent of new restrictions scuppered their plans for the future. Their intention had been to buy a home in which to start their lives together, but in the face of the general uncertainty, the prohibitions affecting Jews, and their efforts to make the move to America, Lotar and Zdenka decided to live in the Prague apartment by the factory. The family’s live-in maid had moved to the house in Libčice to help Ella, so they had space to enlarge Lotar’s room. They had repainted it in a brighter color to reflect the morning light. Lotar had specially built wooden shelves to allow for Zdenka’s book collection to be combined with his own.

  The family left them alone for a week together in Prague. That clutch of stolen days was the extent of their honeymoon, but they loved it all the same. They were tourists in their own city. They drifted through the cobbled streets of Prague as if they did not know them. They discovered new corners in which to hide and embrace. They fed the swans by the riverbank and hiked up to the Strahov Monastery through the steep gardens that overlook the city, and across into the castle grounds.

  Lotar took dozens of portraits of Zdenka, and they used his Kodak 8mm cine camera to film each other as they explored the city anew. Zdenka was always elegant and smiling, Lotar so happy and proud. They went to the movies at the cinema on Karlova Street. They let time slip by as they sipped drinks and watched the crowds drift past. They spent delicious hours in the quiet of the apartment, reading poems, dancing, singing, and laughing, always laughing. Lotar had long dreamed of going to India. He wanted to visit the palaces that he had read about with Zdenka and to take photographs, but that trip would have to come later, when things were calmer, more certain.

  Zdenka, photographed by Lotar, 1939

  As happy as they were, May 1939 was not a time for romantic trips, not if you were Czech, and particularly not if you were Jewish. By then Jewish lawyers and physicians had had their licenses revoked, and a law had been passed in March banning the sale or transfer of Jewish property.

  Life seemed to be pressing in on them in other ways too. Shortly after the wedding, Zdenka’s grandmother had been taken to the hospital with acute pains and was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Zdenka adored her. Her grandparents had raised her for the first five years of her life, when her mother had moved to be with Zdenka’s father, a soldier for the Austro-Hungarian Empire who was stationed near Budapest. Zdenka had a difficult relationship with him, absent as he was from family life, and while she loved her mother, the strongest family bond was undoubtedly always with her grandmother. It was she who had taught Zdenka to sing, empowered her to manage her own finances from a young age, given her the responsibility of freedom, and later encouraged her to study law. She had also, of course, been the one to throw them their wedding party. Zdenka wanted to stay close to her, especially now that she was suffering. It made sense for the newlyweds to stay in Prague, taking care of her, working and hoping that their papers for emigration to America would come through.

  Ella had already decided to spend her days at the house in Libčice. She had always found Prague overwhelming, but now, with the arrival of the Germans, everyday life there had become torturous. Hans was still studying at the Technical College and lightening the gloom by attending Prankster Club meetings and spending weekends playing at the Libčice house with his beloved Jerry and Gin, the new fox terrier puppy. Family correspondence reveals that in addition to writing poems, Hans had also decided to try his hand at sculpture. He wanted to be an artist and attended school only to appease his father. He spent most of his free time in the city with Zdeněk and Zdenka’s sister, Marie, who was a few years younger. Together they formed a little gang: making their own movies, discussing art and books, cycling everywhere, and playing pranks. Zdeněk and Hans deployed their knowledge of chemicals to create sulfur bombs and firecrackers to startle German soldiers in the crowded main streets.

  In the meantime, Otto and Lotar were busy trying to keep Montana afloat as the threat of a Nazi takeover loomed. Otto, Hans, Lotar, and Zdenka made an unlikely foursome and spent most weeknights in the apartment by the factory.

  Oskar, one of Otto’s brothers, had been fired from his job and had to leave his rented home, so Otto and Ella had suggested he move with his wife and little boy to their house in Libčice. Oskar commuted daily to Prague to help in the factory. Each passing week brought news of the difficulties affecting family members and friends. By July 1940, more than half of the Jewish men in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had no income. And so it was that Ella managed a full house in Libčice while Zdenka managed one in Prague.

  Zdenka, it transpired, later wrote down her recollection of the first morning in the Prague apartment with the family. Breakfasts were always early—so early, in fact, that even the punctual housekeeper arrived after they had finished. Zdenka, independent and resourceful as she was, had never been in charge of a household, and certainly not one catering to the needs of three men who were used to being taken care of. Her mother and grandmother had always overseen such matters and had staff to help, so Zdenka had never had to think about practical details. So, when Otto stepped into the dining room at seven sharp the first morning, the breakfast table was not set. He was unimpressed. Otto disliked change, and his morning routine had hitherto been inviolable. He prized punctuality. He had expected Zdenka to be up before he was to prepare things, so he haughtily left her to do so while he listened to the radio in the living room. Zdenka set the table a few minutes later, boiled water, and sliced some bread. When Otto returned to the table and asked Zdenka for his tea, she cheerfully handed him a cup of plain black tea. Now, Otto took his tea with lemon, and he scanned the breakfast table for the small plate of lemon slices that Ella always ensured was there. Otto liked to choose his slice with care and use the spoon to squeeze a little of the juice before allowing the lemon to float in his cup. That morning, there was no plate. Worse, he soon found out, there were no lemons in the kitchen.

  “Ella must have told you that I have lemon with my tea in the mornings?”

  “She must have and I must have forgotten,” replied Zdenka too gleefully. “Would you like some milk and sugar instead?” Her charm unfailingly got her out of trouble. As she smiled broadly at her severe father-in-law, she suggested that perhaps what was needed was a bit of sweetness. But her charm did not work here,
and Otto left stony-faced to have his breakfast at the Café Svêt on his way to the office. When a startled Lotar joined her in the kitchen, they laughed so hard at Otto’s bad temper that they woke Hans. Zdenka, instead of being cowed, took her relationship with her father-in-law as a challenge.

  The next morning, when Otto emerged, a surprise waited for him: Zdenka had laid out a feast on the polished wooden table. She had arranged a platter with cold meats, cheeses, and Otto’s favorite pâté, next to which she had placed a basket with warmed rolls. At Otto’s usual place, she had set out a plate of lemon pieces, some thinly sliced, some quartered. As her father-in-law entered the room, she pronounced formally: “Here, dear sir, is your breakfast. And, of course, your lemon selection.” She bowed slightly.

  Otto could not help but smile back. “Oh, I know what you are doing. You are trying to fatten me up to kill me,” he returned, completely deadpan.

  That was opening enough for Zdenka to tease him about his previous outburst. It was unusual for anyone to joke with Otto. No one dared. Up until that day, his wife, Ella, and his brother Richard had been the only ones in the family brave enough to do so. For the next few months, until the family was forced to move to the house in Libčice, Otto came to cherish his chats with Zdenka while he had his breakfast. It must have been during those early breakfasts, as he sipped his lemon tea, that their bond was forged. It was then that Otto, just like Lotar, Hans, and Ella, began to love Zdenka.

  I have a letter written in two parts by Otto and his brother Oskar in August 1939 to their eldest brother in America. It describes the family’s new conditions.

  Dear Victor and children,

  I wish to thank you so much for all your efforts so far on our behalf despite the lack of success. The point is to request a visa from any overseas country. It is only once this has been obtained that one may apply for a departure permit from the Gestapo, requiring certain formalities to be met—a return is, of course, out of the question. It is best if the person wishing to depart has in hand or receives a travel ticket from friends abroad, given that one is not allowed to purchase them here. The process on this side is nearly insurmountable.