Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  This time she wrote about layoffs and bankruptcies, even if she did not directly relate them to herself. For her, the issue was her children, her state of mind, and her longing. It is easy enough to imagine that she was missing the physical side of her marriage as well; in one of her last letters before moving to Basel, she wrote:

  My dearest darling, Today I found a few letters from you while I was straightening up, where you told me about your candy stick & other lovely things like that! It made me feel so ancient & made me desperately want to get my head carefree enough that I can enjoy thinking about the lower half of my body again. What do you think of that? I love you so much, but what good does it do me if I have to scratch around with my pen point on a sheet of paper all the time to give you a sermon on my love? I can’t ever see you darling & over the phone everyone is always in the room & never budges & so we never have any privacy to talk. It’ll be over soon, I’m sure of it & today when I packed up 4 boxes of china & glasses I thought about how long I’d probably have my things in those boxes. Till September at the latest, I think, but I’d prefer July!

  It did take a long time, however, before Leni could finally move to Basel. She brought her younger son, Buddy, with her but left Stephan in Frankfurt for the time being, with Alice: for one thing, he was still in school, and Leni wanted to look for the most appropriate school in Basel first; for another, Alice thought it was better for her daughter to bring only one child at first, that would make it easier for her to start over in Basel, and furthermore they didn’t have a place to live yet. And Stephan? Stephan loved his grandma Alice and probably didn’t mind the arrangement at all.

  Erich, Leni, and Buddy lived in a hotel for a few months before they found the apartment on Gundeldingerstrasse. At last they could set out and use the furniture from Frankfurt and unpack the boxes of “china & glasses.” Leni and Buddy settled into Basel, and soon Buddy was speaking such good Swiss German that Leni had to always be after him to speak High German.

  But the family was still torn in two, between Basel and Frankfurt. Only when Stephan moved to Basel in 1932 and Alice in 1933 did they finally more or less reestablish their normal life.

  There was a tennis court behind the house on Gundeldingerstrasse, which a coating of water in winter transformed into a skating rink for the children. Did Buddy get his first ice skates that first winter, or the next one? He no longer remembers. But there are a couple of things he knows for sure: he was happy the first time he had skates on his feet, and his greatest joy was when they built a real skating rink across the street. From then on, his winters were devoted to ice-skating—and not only his winters, also his brother Stephan’s.

  The boys spent the summers either with Leni and Alice in Sils-Maria, at Auntie O.’s, or up in the mountains at a summer camp called Alpmorgenholz, near Laus in the Graubünden Canton, which Buddy remembers extremely fondly. Obviously, it was a summer camp for boys—coeducation was not common at the time—and Buddy didn’t mind that in the least. On the contrary: he liked life with so many other boys, taking hikes and playing sports, putting on plays, singing and playing around the campfires. They bathed in the open air and ate very simple food, but everyone was full at the end of the meal. Every other day, two boys were sent down to the village with panniers on their backs to replenish the camp’s provisions. As a reward for the long hike and the hauling, they were allowed to buy an ice cream in the village confectionery, and this privilege was enough for the boys to get into fistfights over.

  Leni was fully occupied with settling into Basel, meeting people, and getting to know her new surroundings. Of course she had help around the house in Gundeldingerstrasse as well: Sophie Schmidt, a brawny woman from Baden who, Buddy recalls, spoke in dialect with a thick accent. A good-hearted woman, but extremely energetic. When she called the children to the table, she would always say: “Hey, cripples, go wash your hands!” Buddy also says that he and his brother, on Erich’s wishes, received religious instruction for a while from a Polish man who spoke only broken German. Stephan always used to mimic him: “Rachel, sssee was a beauuutiful gull.” They were not religious, but Erich went to temple on the High Holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur. Leni never did either, of course.

  Leni quickly struck up an acquaintance with the women she would play bridge with once a week, and whom she would also sometimes meet at the pastry shop in the afternoons. In addition, she had to take care of her mother, Alice, who was having an unexpectedly difficult time getting used to life in Basel. A daily routine developed that was very different from what Leni had expected, but life in general was much more peaceful than in Frankfurt. No one knew what would happen in Germany, but the hateful slogans about Jews were impossible to overlook; they even reached Basel. At least the family was together again. Erich’s business was not going as well as Leni had hoped. “It’s better to get rich slowly than quickly,” she had written in one of her letters—but this was definitely too slow. They got by, but they certainly were not rich.

  Still, none of them were homesick for Germany.

  The fact that Erich started applying for Swiss citizenship very early shows how serious he was about his life in Switzerland. At first he received only a residence permit, then permission to settle in Switzerland, but on April 2, 1936, the Basel Canton Department of the Interior refused his application for citizenship due to his “still insufficient assimilation”—whatever that might mean. His hopes for a Swiss passport would remain unfulfilled for a long time to come.

  Buddy and Leni Elias, circa 1933 (photo credit 6.7)

  Why would a Swiss passport be so important to him, if he was living with his family in Basel and there was no threat of deportation? Shouldn’t that have been enough? But a passport means more than merely the right to live somewhere: it defines its possessor; it says where he or she belongs, to what group, in what place. A passport also defines who is responsible for the possessor’s welfare, if it should be necessary to provide any services. At least that’s how it is in a state ruled by laws. Furthermore, Erich would have needed a passport to take business trips for the company. And it would soon become clear how right he was to pursue a Swiss passport. Nazi Germany was not a state ruled by laws, and a regulation of November 25, 1941, revoked the German citizenship of any Jews living outside of Germany. They were now without a passport, without a state, ineligible to claim any social services—in short, without the right to a homeland.

  In April 1942, the German consulate ordered Erich Elias to send in any identification papers in his possession. The notice was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Erich Israel Elias, Herbstgasse 11, Basel: according to a regulation dating from August 17, 1938, all male Germans of Jewish background had to have the first or middle name Israel, and all female Germans of Jewish background had to be named Sara; their passports were marked with a large stamped J. Buddy, sixteen years old at the time, still remembers the day when he came home and his father had just gotten the news that he had lost his German citizenship and had to give up his passport. He says he almost never saw his father so angry. Erich took his son to the consulate and slammed his passport onto the table, then took him out for a beer at the pub on the corner. That was the first time Buddy ever had a beer with his father.

  In February 1942, the now-stateless Erich Elias reapplied for “Procurement of Authorization from the Swiss Confederation for the Granting of Citizenship.” He received a request to appear “at 8:15 a.m. on October 30, 1942,” together with his wife, “to supply information to the town clerk about your state of health and the medical background of your family.” It sounded promising. Erich and Leni went to the city council offices at Stadthausgasse 13 with high hopes—their state of health was good, after all—but on June 25, 1943, almost eight months later, Erich was verbally informed that his request was once again denied “due to insufficient assimilation.” This time he submitted an appeal, for the following reasons:

  Since 1929, that is for 14 years, I have lived in Basel without interruption. I received p
ermission to settle in the Basel-Stadt Canton in 1936 and kept that permission until 1942, when it was withdrawn solely because I became stateless as a result of a German regulation. During my many years in Switzerland, I have grown intimately familiar with the local customs and circumstances and have learned to treasure my host country in the highest degree. As I can substantiate with numerous references, I have completely assimilated here and have no relationships whatsoever with my former native country. This is especially true, in addition, of my two sons, Stephan (b. 1921) and Bernhard (b. 1925); as you can see from the attached autobiographical statements, both have spent the majority of their lives in Switzerland. Neither in language nor in mentality are they in any way different from their Swiss contemporaries. Especially in Swiss sports circles, both are well-known and well liked.

  I myself have worked for years in the pectin industry, specifically in the laboratory of Unipektin Corp. in Zurich. It is primarily at the request of my company that I have decided to submit this appeal. As stated in the enclosed letter from Unipektin Corp., Zurich, which I hereby expressly declare to be an attachment to this argument for recourse, it would be of great significance to the company, one that is not unimportant in the national economy, if you were to grant my request.

  I therefore hope that you consider the point of view put forward by Unipektin Corp. as you take my request for appeal under review with all due consideration.

  But this protest failed as well. A letter from Erich to the citizenship office reveals why the process went so badly for him: he had learned from one of the unfavorable reports in his file that it was due to “underhanded business dealings in financial transactions with Jews in Germany.”

  Erich countered as follows:

  My only relationship with Germany, during the past 12 years, consisted solely of the fact that I had previously established a foreign subsidiary of the most important German pectin factory (Pomosin Works), made up of businesses that manufactured and sold pectin and pectin products (e.g., the well-known “Opekta”) combined into a holding company with the deceased national councilman Dr. R. Gallati, from Glarus, on the board of directors. The company also had a line of business exporting Swiss pomace, and I can claim to have been the first to pioneer this export industry. Financial transactions took place only within the framework of this business, never with myself or anyone else acting as private individuals. In Basel alone, my employees in the office, the factory, and travel have numbered as many as 35 persons. During this entire period I have never once done any private business, neither with Jews nor with Christians and neither in Germany nor anywhere else.

  As a result of conflicts with the National Socialists who joined the executive team of the company in 1937–38 and with their local representatives in Switzerland, I have been removed from a leadership role in the company.

  The unfavorable report given to you about my activities is objectively untrue and can only have come from someone’s intentional efforts to malign me. I am able and eager to supply references to prove my unimpeachable business conduct.

  I have also learned that my older son has been described to you as a “disingenuous shirker.” I can only conclude that this characterization likewise was made with malicious intent, or else by someone who simply does not know my son, since it describes the exact opposite of the person he truly is.

  Without being guilty of flattery, I may say that he is the sincerest and most honest person you could imagine, and diligent and hardworking like few others I know. The last school he attended, at the Commercial Union, graduated him with honors. He takes part in numerous athletic competitions and his teachers and schoolmates can all attest to his probity.

  A letter from a lawyer, Dr. Naegeli, to Erich Elias on November 23, 1943, shed light at last on the real reason Erich’s citizenship requests were denied: Switzerland’s reluctance to admit too many Jews. “The boat is full” was the phrase heard far and wide at the time. The lawyer reports that he had discussed the prevailing practice with the officials in charge of requests for citizenship, obviously without naming any names.

  Buddy and Erich Elias, circa 1944 (photo credit 6.8)

  Then I received the strange explanation that the Executive Federal Council had given instructions simply not to grant any more requests from Jewish applicants born abroad … I am afraid that in fact the practices described to me by the official in charge are how in fact things are done these days, and no matter how astonished I am by this position, there is nothing I can do at the moment to change it … When the war reaches its end and the many immigrants currently living here without papers have found new homelands elsewhere, in other words when the danger of our needing to permanently shelter so many Jewish refugees has passed, that will no doubt be the time to resubmit your application and have it granted.

  (It would take until 1952 before Erich and Leni became Swiss citizens.)

  The autobiographical statements put together by Stephan and Buddy Elias, and included in Erich’s 1942 appeal submission, show the course that their lives were taking.

  Stephan Carl Elias: Autobiographical Statement

  I was born on December 20, 1921, in Frankfurt am Main. I attended primary school there for four years. Then I moved to Basel to rejoin my parents, and attended high school here for six years. Afterward, I attended technical school for one semester, but then changed my original career goal and started commercial training, during which time I simultaneously attended the business college of the Commercial Union for three years. I passed my final exams and am currently a sales employee at a Basel firm.

  As a member of the Red-White Sport Club, I compete in track and field in the summer and ice hockey in the winter. I am the goalie of the Basel team and was once even offered a place on the Swiss National Team by the Technical Committee of the Swiss Ice Hockey League.

  In my entire way of life, thought, and feeling, I am Swiss.

  Bernhard Elias: Autobiographical Statement

  I was born on June 2, 1925, in Frankfurt am Main. I lived there for four years before moving with my mother to join my father in Basel. I went to kindergarten every day and attended primary school for four years, starting when I was 6. After scoring well on the entrance exam, I transferred to the high school, from which after just 4 years I transferred again to the canton commercial high school, from which I graduated. In May of this year I entered an optician training program.

  In the athletic sphere I am mainly active in winter in figure skating, and have performed in skating exhibitions and variety shows on almost all the rinks in Switzerland. In addition, I am a member of the R.T.V. Track and Field association. I am also a member of the “Quodlibet” theater troupe, and always take part in the public performances of plays in dialect.

  My deepest wish is to become a Swiss citizen.

  These autobiographical statements sound so “normal,” so harmless—as though there were nothing in their lives besides school and sports. And sports really did play a great role in both boys’ lives, with acting as well as sports for Buddy. Buddy says that when Stephan’s hockey team was playing in another Swiss city and the game was broadcast on the radio, the whole family gathered around the radio to listen, and every time the announcer said the goalie’s name, “Elias,” they all clapped and cheered and almost burst with pride, even Alice, who didn’t care much about sports.

  These were completely normal things to do for two completely normal young men. Still, from today’s perspective, it does sound rather odd when you think about how, while they played hockey, performed variety shows on ice, and acted in dialect in an amateur theater, all around them—all around Switzerland—millions upon millions were dying. In 1942, when these autobiographical statements were written, the large concentration camps already existed, and the first killings with poison gas had already begun at Auschwitz. But they knew nothing about that; they couldn’t know anything about it.

  * * *

  1 “I.” is his mother, Alice, who, as mentioned earlier, had that
nickname within the family.

  2 Ten days later, Anne Frank was born.

  7.

  The Time Without Letters

  What was life like safe in Switzerland, surrounded by warring nations, by the thunder of cannon whose echo you felt like you could hear even if they were miles away? What was life like under the droning of warplanes, the bombers with their deadly cargo? Even in Basel they must have sometimes heard the planes—the borders of France and Germany are not far away, and there were probably bombs meant for one or the other that accidentally fell on Swiss soil. At least that’s what Buddy says today.

  The family received its first shock in March 1941, when they learned that Jean-Michel Frank, Leni’s cousin and a well-known furniture designer, had committed suicide in New York. The motive is not known. He was one of the Germans who fled from Paris to America because he felt doubly unsafe there—the Nazis not only persecuted Jews but also mercilessly persecuted homosexuals. At age forty-six, he jumped out the window of his apartment in Manhattan. His friend Jean Cocteau said Jean-Michel’s death “was like a curtain falling between the world of light and the world of darkness.” The news of his death struck the family hard, and awakened memories of Jean-Michel’s brothers, Oscar and Georges, who had died fighting against Germany in World War I; and of their father Léon’s sad end, when he heard about his second son’s death and likewise committed suicide; and of their mother, Nanette, whose despair was so great that she had to be sent to a mental institution, where she had since died as well. The family in Basel must also have been struck by the fact that Jean-Michel had chosen the same way to die as his father so many years before—jumping out a window.