The Hours After

by Gerda Weissmann Klein

  As was the custom in most middle-class families of that place and period, Mother had some live-in help during my formative years, although I remember that there was a certain turnover: When one of those maids got married, they would recommend someone else from their family or hometown to take over their duties. Most of the maids came from an area known as the Odenwald, where people lived a backwoods type of existence that would manifest itself in the superstitions they all harbored. The maids would regale me with stories of “witches” in their town who had given the “evil eye” to those who had crossed them, to the point of causing horrible illnesses—even death—in those they disliked. What had also gained currency in their town were the many instances of people who had apparently died while in a state of suspended animation. Thus they had been buried while still alive, as was proved in the case of those who through some twist in the maid’s story were exhumed in time to be saved.

  Tales of that nature were not conducive to untroubled sleep on occasions when I found myself alone at night and in the darkness of my bedroom would hear all sorts of strange noises, from creaking beams to weird animal sounds. But those were “the good old days.” Having maids in Jewish households came to an end with the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, along with many other restrictions that disenfranchised Jews at that time, above all depriving them of their citizenship rights.

  I do remember that from my earliest childhood I had a love for books, and thereby hangs a tale often recounted by Mother with great amusement. It seems I was sitting in a playpen at a tender age, trying to get her attention about an urgent matter. Because my cries went unheeded for a time, I apparently banged my fist on the toy before me and, in anger and frustration, exclaimed, “One doesn’t even get books around here!” I was able to make up for that deprivation later in life, and some of my fondest memories go back to my childhood illnesses, when I could read to my heart’s content without feeling guilty about neglected chores. I remember times when after lights-out I would continue with whatever saga absorbed me at the moment, reading with a flashlight under the blanket. Only with great reluctance would I come to the last page and the end of my companionship with the characters I had gotten to know and love—or hate, as the case might be.

  I clearly remember reading many of the tomes that were classics in the English-speaking world, such as Treasure Island, Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and, yes, the Tarzan series. From these I soon gravitated to James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, and it wasn’t long before I discovered The Last of the Mohicans. Once my interest in the American Indian had been sparked, I became utterly fascinated by a German writer of tales of high adventure, Karl May, who was everybody’s boyhood idol. Many of his writings dealt with American frontier life in an astoundingly authentic way (especially in view of the fact that he never set foot outside Germany and wrote a great many of his stories in prison). Although his tales were set in exotic places around the world, in all those exploits there was one constant: His protagonists always gained the upper hand over their adversaries through measures as cunning and resourceful as they were innovative.

  Inevitably the stories dealing with the American West led to an obsession my friends and I developed about everything to do with our romantic notions of American frontier life. This was greatly enhanced by watching the movies of American Westerns featuring Tom Mix or Tom Tyler, or reading the likes of Zane Grey, and we would try to emulate those heroes by dressing up in Western garb (as closely as we could imitate it) and playing “Cowboys-and-Indians.” It was always my fervent wish to explore those mountains and prairies depicted in literature and on film, and I could not have imagined then that the American West would become my own stamping ground in later life.

  My boyhood years until 1933 were spent freely intermingling with classmates and friends, in one another’s homes and fields, helping to harvest crops, threading tobacco onto string for curing the leaves in attics, and similar pursuits. Father’s warehouse served as a playground for building secret hideouts among the bales of hops he would process and sell to breweries. In addition, tobacco and sacks of grain were stored on several floors. In turn my friends’ barns and haylofts would serve similar purposes, when we were not engaged in playing soccer or a variety of “street games.” In fact, the whole town was our playground: Woods, fields, or a simple sand hill would become a popular spot, especially in the spring, when we would roll Easter eggs along channels that snaked down the hill under bridges we had carefully built to cross the paths the eggs would take. Those diversions were in no way inconsistent with our own Passover observances, but rather such activities took on secular aspects, like those during celebrations of a national holiday.

  In the winter there were ample opportunities for ice-skating and sledding, but whenever weather permitted we would find ourselves engaged in “war games,” in the course of which the French inevitably were the enemy. This was an outgrowth of the indoctrination we received in school and our reading in national magazines—stories drawing on the ancient feud with France, always depicting the French armed to the teeth in comparison with the Germans, and making clear that their Maginot Line was impregnable. At the same time there existed a peculiar double standard: Everything French, especially the language, exerted a certain fascination and snob appeal and was much sought after.

  Even at thirteen I could sense that there were forces at work determined to settle a score after the inglorious defeat of World War I. I often thought that the country might be involved in another war before too many years would pass, a prospect I contemplated with horror.

  For their part my parents, brother, and sister participated freely in all social or communal activities that befitted their age and standing, as did Jews elsewhere in the country, in other strata of public and private endeavor, or so it seemed to me. It was hardly surprising then that I felt my childhood to be an absolutely normal one until the Nazi takeover in 1933.

  Having lived in nearby Heidelberg, our parents still retained many connections there, and much of the family’s social life, aside from the children’s education, revolved around the much broader horizons available in that cosmopolitan city. Thus, individually or as a family we would frequently avail ourselves of all that Heidelberg had to offer, be it social, cultural, or its scenic splendors that abounded everywhere. There would be wonderful walks and hikes all around the city and in its mountainous environs.

  Because all this was such a natural part of the structure of our lives, and because I, along with everyone else I knew, considered myself to be an integral part of the fabric of German society—in no way different from others—the feeling of betrayal after the Nazi takeover was all the more acute. Although initially my friends and classmates tended to be apologetic about their gradual estrangement from us, Nazi propaganda eventually took hold, and those apologies changed to derisive taunts that promised a trip to a concentration camp to any Jew stepping out of line. It didn’t take much longer until most of my former friends and classmates broke off all contact with us and a completely hostile attitude set in. For a while there would be isolated instances here and there in which a former friend would still speak to me, but as time went on that too ceased.

  In the course of the first year after the Nazi takeover, I had been able to watch up close, during mandatory class attendance at films such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, how that masterpiece of propaganda was taking effect, leaving me to wonder how I, at fourteen, had suddenly become an outcast. One of the greatest shocks came when one of my teachers, until then a favorite of mine, addressed the class about the “guests among us,” who had better toe the mark if they didn’t want to suffer most unpleasant consequences.

  Of course we should have been prepared for such attitudes by then. The early days after Hitler’s assumption of power come to mind. At school in Heidelberg we had a free period once a week, devoted to religious instruction for the various denominations. Our religious teacher addressed us regarding the latest events. His
words still ring in my ears: “Well, we have seen a momentous upheaval in recent times, whose outcome is unalterable. I do not know what I can tell you about what lies ahead for us. The only thing we can hope for at the moment is that no one comes to our doorstep and slits our throats.” That particular projection of what might happen was hardly a random figment of Mr. Durlacher’s vivid imagination. Rather, it was based on a line from a marching song the SA storm troopers timed to perfection so they could bellow it as they tramped by Jewish homes: “. . . and when Jewish blood splatters from our knives—yes, then all will go well!”

  While all of us, adults and youngsters, were waiting for what would happen next, an incident occurred that gave us some inkling of what might be in store for Jews. On coming home from school one day and getting off the streetcar at its terminal station, which was at the only hotel in Walldorf, I became aware of a great commotion surrounding that building. Not daring to ask any questions, I made my way home and found that some facts had already come to light in the meantime. My parents had heard from neighbors that in the course of the morning, a contingent of SA men had rounded up all known Communists in the town, had herded them into the courtyard of the Hotel Astoria, a pallid imitation of its renowned namesake in New York, the Waldorf-Astoria. There this gang of thugs had beaten them in an unheard-of orgy of brutality. In order to show the extent of their “humanity,” they had summoned the town doctor—before the beating—to attend and to minister to their victims’ wounds.

  During the ensuing weeks, the town’s Jews waited for the other shoe to drop, but when no further excesses took place, they lulled themselves into a false sense of security that let them rationalize that perhaps the worst of the revolution had passed, that as law-abiding citizens who had lived in those surroundings for generations, they would be spared any further anguish. The human mind is ever ready to deny the unthinkable.

  In the years leading up to 1933, the number of the town’s Jews hovered around sixty, as against the general population of five thousand, and those numbers steadily declined to nineteen by the time of the 1940 deportation of that remnant—among them my parents—to the Camp de Gurs, in the South of France.

  Perhaps because the number of Jews in the town was so small, they formed a close-knit community with a conservative adherence to religious services and, in general, a lively interest in the arts. As time went on it became increasingly more difficult to get the required minyan of ten men needed for any official religious service, according to Jewish stricture. That meant that often the missing number of men had to be brought in from a neighboring village. Although Walldorf had provided two rabbis of note to temples in large cities within Germany, our small congregation could not afford one of its own and so had to make do with a prayer leader, Mr. Hahn, the father of one of those spiritual leaders. During my early teens Mr. Hahn was in his seventies, and it may be said of him that he wore many hats. In addition to conducting services, he served as religious schoolteacher for the handful of Jewish youngsters, and with great determination tried to imbue us with a sense of our Jewish identity. Within the span of my recollection, there were only two births and one wedding on record among the Jews of Walldorf, leaving Mr. Hahn to officiate mainly at funerals, as far as those aspects of his duties were concerned.

  Until 1933 the Jews of Walldorf enjoyed an active social life. On weekend afternoons a group of men would meet at someone’s home or in a restaurant for their popular card game of Skat, while in the evenings families would visit one another for regular social get-togethers. On such occasions there would be an abundance of food, much easy banter and gossip delving into the foibles of members of the community not present at those “soirées.” The conversation could and often would take a more serious turn, especially as the position of the Jews became more precarious. Parallels were established with France’s notorious “Affaire Dreyfus,” which still weighed heavily on people’s minds. Before Hitler’s assumption of power, this was often regarded as a bellwether of what could happen in Germany as well when it came to anti-Semitism. I remember a distant relative by marriage, Louis Weil, a confirmed Francophile, perhaps because there was in fact a French branch of his family. He subscribed to various French journals, and I remember him holding forth on the subject of anti-Semitism, and coming to the conclusion that, as in the Dreyfus case, in which someone of Emile Zola’s stature had helped stem the tide of anti-Semitic sentiment in France with his famous J’accuse, so in Germany, too, justice would prevail in the end. So, the Jews of Germany deluded themselves that they were part and parcel of the German nation and that it would always remain that way. It was Louis Weil, incidentally, who told me somewhat wistfully at the time of my emigration that the one thing he envied me about going to the States was the fact that I would soon know enough English to be able to read Shakespeare in the original. Alas, he himself, who spoke no English, was never to get the chance to learn it. Before 1937 was up, he succumbed to a sudden illness, one of the lucky ones to die of natural causes.

  Because with the passing of each month it became increasingly clear that Germany represented a dead end for Jews—a fact that we, the young among them, understood and seized more readily—we gave a great deal of thought to where our future might lie. Within my family, the focus became the United States, where we had a number of relatives, some native born, others who had gone there before the turn of the century, and still others who had made their way to those shores more recently.

  The ever-increasing restrictions regarding Jewish businesses were achieving their aim of curtailing and eventually halting all commerce between “Aryans” and Jews until the owners of Jewish enterprises either went out of business or were forced to sell to Aryan firms.

  As Father’s hands were being tied more and more, and income from his hops brokerage business dried up to minimal levels, Mother, in her resourceful, industrious way, jumped into the breach. She pursued several small ventures. She would ship to clients in cities far and wide the specialty of our region—asparagus—when in season. Or she would provide out-of-the-ordinary sweets and confections to family members and friends in nearby cities, along with specially prepared goose delicacies or poultry from our backyard.

  It took only one year after the Nazis came to power for my father’s business to suffer to the extent that he could no longer provide tuition for my pursuit of what I had hoped would be a professional career. That meant that at fourteen, along with other Jewish boys, I began to cast about for avenues that would eventually lead to emigration. In the meanwhile we felt it was important to acquire some sort of training that would stand us in good stead, no matter where our paths would take us. In my case the choice of a trade seemed fairly obvious. Having always been enamored of the realm of books, I chose the nearest thing to that predilection: printing.

  In short order I was fortunate enough to begin an apprenticeship at a local stationer’s whose expanded business comprised printing as well. I had barely moved beyond the basic training stage when the authorities got wind of the fact that this “Aryan” shop was employing a Jewish apprentice, and so my career as typesetter came to an abrupt, if temporary, end after only a few months. That left me with few job prospects and emigration still looming in an uncertain future.

  At that point there existed a few Jewish businesses in Walldorf that had not yet been adversely affected by events, and as luck would have it, I found employment in a cigar factory, then still under Jewish management. Of course it was hardly what I had aspired to, but considering the options, it was a good job. It also helped bring in some funds in the face of my parents’ steadily declining income. This change of career kept me in greater isolation from my friends in Heidelberg, save for weekend excursions to attend the meetings of the Jewish young men’s club for as long as that was still possible. Having only two other friends in our small circle in Walldorf drove me increasingly toward the more unfettered world of books, which let my fantasies soar toward other horizons. I remember the three years between my leavin
g school at age fourteen until my emigration at seventeen as a time of great uncertainty—and of the erosion of most of our civil liberties. For the time being I had my work and filled my spare time with books or music from the radio, or both. Often I found myself playing a game of solitaire, well aware of the fact that I was doing so in more ways than one. Although I always craved the companionship of my contemporaries, the constraints of the times helped to intensify a natural tendency toward introversion.

  Meanwhile my sister completed her nurse’s training, and—the wheels having been set in motion—her prayers were answered when she received the necessary legal papers from one of our American relatives that provided an escape from the untenable situation in which we all found ourselves. Thus, in the spring of 1936, she was the first of our immediate family to make it to the safety of the United States. Because most of our relatives lived in Buffalo, it was an obvious move for her to settle in that city. In due course she was able to prevail on another relative to furnish a similar affidavit vouching for my support, making it possible, to my immense joy and relief, to follow her a year later.

  Transportation provided no problem in 1937, inasmuch as my brother Max was then still working for the Hamburg-America Line, and so I was able to leave by mid-June on one of the SS St. Louis’s sister ships, with a happier outcome than that liner was to have two years later. The atmosphere on board was pleasant, and despite its name and the flag under which the SS Deutschland was sailing, there were few outward manifestations of the terror I was leaving behind, much of that no doubt attributable to the international clientele aboard.

  Among the shipboard friendships I formed, one stands out in particular. It was with an American student, my senior by a few years, who had just concluded two semesters at Heidelberg University, a subject that led to many insightful conversations. We talked about his impressions of the country, and he went on to try to depict certain aspects of the American way of life that lay ahead of me, including, I still remember, some of the sophisticated humor from the pages of the New Yorker, a magazine to which I would become addicted in due time. What Fred Irvin was able to convey to me in his flawless German, picked up in the course of his year in Heidelberg, were his feelings about Germany. By and large his experience had been a most positive one, and he had encountered much that he liked a great deal. On the other hand he had not been blind to what he had seen all around him, as he made clear to me. What he enlarged on in subsequent letters, which reached me in Buffalo from his home near Philadelphia, was his observation that a great many of the German people were far too militaristic and in time to come would have to pay a steep price for their excesses, among them those directed at Jews.