For Manfred, the absence of his father was filled by his extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially his grandmother, with whom he was especially close. She loved helping him with his homework and was overjoyed the day he came home and announced he was the best student in his class and the first to know all his multiplication tables.
“The teacher says I’ll probably be a finance minister when I grow up,” Manfred reported.
Serious minded and hardworking at an age when many boys were not, Manfred seemed older than his years. He had a classically proportioned face, twice as long as it was wide, and symmetrical features, making him look mature for his age. A willing harvester of apples and plums for his mother’s canning, he earned his first money picking and selling blueberries by the basket. He also made deliveries on his bicycle to his mother’s customers in surrounding towns.
Education for the children of Josbach took place in a two-room schoolhouse, with grades one through four in one room and five through eight in the adjacent room. Out of seventy students, ten were Jews. There was only one teacher, who went back and forth between the two classrooms. Although Josbach had its own synagogue, they were one Jewish male shy of the minyan required to hold communal worship. Worshippers walked two or three miles to the synagogue in Halsdorf for weekly services instead. Occasionally, arrangements were made for a tenth man to come to Josbach from another town so local services could be held for bar mitzvahs and High Holidays.
When Manfred was nine, his grandmother became ill. After several days, a physician was summoned. Manfred waited anxiously with the rest of the family for the arrival of Dr. Heinrich Hesse from Rauschenberg, eight miles away. It had been snowing all day, and the doctor finally showed up in late afternoon. He examined Johanna and left some medication for her chest congestion. What Manfred would never forget about this day had to do with what the doctor told them as he was putting on his overcoat to leave.
The date was January 30, 1933. With a cheerful lilt in his voice, Dr. Hesse announced, “Something wonderful has happened today. Adolf Hitler has been made the new chancellor!”
The changes wrought by this news came more slowly to isolated hamlets like Josbach—in those days in Germany, there was a little village every few miles. But it was only a matter of time before the quiet, rural town felt the brunt of Nazism. Manfred’s family first became aware of the anti-Semitic fervor sweeping the country during the twenty-four-hour boycott of Jewish businesses two months later on April 1, 1933. Even in neighborly Josbach, many customers observed the boycott and stayed away from the stores owned by Jews, although there were none of the demonstrations or outbreaks of violence that were so widespread in cities like Frankfurt and Berlin.
In November 1933, Germany held its first national election since Hitler had taken control of the government. All opposition parties had by then been banned, and voters were presented with a single slate of Nazi Party candidates. The voting was not by secret ballot, and in most locations, voters had to hand their ballots directly to party officials. Setting the tone for future elections during the Nazi era, voter intimidation was commonplace. Citizens were threatened with reprisals if they voted against Hitler, or even if they failed to vote. As a result, voter turnout was 95 percent, and the Nazi Party received nearly 40 million votes, some 92 percent of all those cast.
Manfred’s uncle Solomon went to the polls proudly wearing the Iron Cross he had earned fighting for Germany in the last war. Like so many other Jewish war veterans, Solomon, who owned the Josbach hardware store, believed that he would be protected against Nazi persecution because he had fought for the Fatherland. Like most German Jews, Solomon considered himself a German first and a Jew second. This feeling of security and a desire not to be ostracized led Solomon Steinfeld to vote for the Nazi slate. He was not alone; other Jews in Josbach, including Grandma Johanna, voted for the Nazi candidates, if only to avoid being identified as “no” votes.
In Josbach, it was local custom for Jewish families to gather each week—usually on Fridays after dinner or on Saturdays after lunch—to discuss topics of interest to them and their community. Most children would run around and play instead of paying attention to the grown-ups, but Manfred was fascinated by the adult conversations. One discussion he overheard had to do with Hitler and the Nazis. Most of the adults thought there was little future for the Nazis, and that Hitler and his party, for many years the minority, would not last long in power. Many chancellors and cabinets before them had lasted only a short time. Josbach had only one known Nazi in town, a man named Heinrich Haupt, who had joined the party in the 1920s.
A few of the adults were convinced, however, that the Nazis were a growing threat, and to bolster their argument, they pointed to surrounding towns, which were known to have more Nazis and had seen increased reports of persecution against Jews.
It took some time before Manfred sensed any divide between the Jewish and non-Jewish students at his school. But one day they were told that their teacher had retired. His replacement was a younger man from out of the area who preached Nazi doctrine. The appearance of this new teacher signaled a shift for Manfred and the other Jewish children. From that moment on, in the classroom and during recreational activities, the Jews were increasingly ridiculed by the teacher and bullied by their classmates.
The next summer, Manfred spent part of his vacation with his mother’s brother, Arthur Katten, and his wife, Lina, in nearby Rauschenberg. After befriending some neighborhood boys, Manfred was invited to attend a local meeting of a national organization, Deutsches Jungvolk, for boys aged ten to fourteen. Manfred was excited to hear that they would be participating in sports, camping, and hiking. However, the group was affiliated with the Hitler Youth movement, and when they learned that Manfred was a Jew, he was promptly excluded as being unfit.
Not long after Manfred returned home, the first of his family members was picked up by the Nazis. To his shock, it was his uncle Arthur. Arrested at home by uniformed storm troopers, his mother’s brother was held in “protective custody” for six weeks before he was released without any charges being filed. Arthur had honorably served his country in World War I, but he realized now that this meant nothing under the Nazi regime. He immediately began making plans to try to get himself and his family out of Germany as quickly as possible.
Anti-Semitism grew ever more prevalent in the daily life of Josbach, and the local Jews became convinced that the Nazi regime had entrenched its power, with Hitler in full control as the supreme leader of Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, making Jews second-class citizens and revoking most of their political rights. Only Germans with four non-Jewish German grandparents were deemed “racially acceptable,” and Judaism was now defined as a race rather than a religion. It was irrelevant whether people practiced Judaism or were even practicing Christians; by law, if they possessed “Jewish blood,” they were Jews.
Guided by Third Reich dogma that encouraged “racially pure” women to bear as many Aryan children as possible, mixed marriages between Jews and persons with “German or related blood” were made a criminal offense. Hitler and his Nazi Party promulgated the notion that an enlarged, racially superior German population was destined to expand and rule by military force. One early step toward that goal—and the global conflict that would soon follow—took place in 1936, when Hitler sent German military forces to occupy the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone in western Germany established under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
In that same year, Manfred’s teacher, who kept a swastika pinned on the lapel of his jacket, herded all the students outside and lined them up like young military recruits along Josbach’s main street, where he told them a “special” motorcade was scheduled to pass through town. Some of the students eagerly pushed their way forward, but Manfred hung back. He had an idea it was going to be some Nazi-inspired demonstration, and he had no desire to be standing in front. Their wait wasn’t long. A black, open-roofed car approached at moderate s
peed. As they had practiced in school, upon the teacher’s command nearly all of the children snapped their right arms straight out.
“Sieg heil!” shouted a crescendo of high-pitched children’s voices.
Manfred did not raise his arm or his voice. He just stared at the mustachioed man in the backseat. He had seen his picture many times.
As the car passed, Hitler seemed to raise his hand to the side of his head in acknowledgment of the mass salute. Then he let it drop out of sight.
“Sieg heil! Sieg heil!”
The salutes ended only when the car turned a corner and was gone.
Young Manfred sensed that the mustachioed man in the black car meant danger to him, his family, and every Jew in Germany.
The day that two men in Nazi uniforms came to threaten his grandmother with arrest, she and Manfred were home alone. What crime could an old, sickly woman be guilty of? It seemed that Johanna Steinfeld held a first mortgage on a property in another town that these two men owned. But they had never made any payments and were thus greatly in arrears to her. Now they threatened the elderly woman with jail on a trumped-up charge if she didn’t agree to cancel the mortgage on the property. She went ashen. Turning to Manfred, she told him to run as fast as he could and bring back the mayor.
In 1930s Germany, a town’s Bürgermeister held a great deal of authority, even with outside officials. By then, the man who had once been Josbach’s first and only member of the Nazi Party, Heinrich Haupt, was serving as mayor. He was well liked by all, and even got together with some Jewish friends on Saturday nights to play Skat, the most popular card game in Germany.
Haupt hurried back to the house with Manfred and immediately asked to see the men’s credentials, which they showed him. But when he demanded to see a court-issued arrest warrant, the men admitted they did not have one.
“You have no jurisdiction here,” Haupt said sternly. “Mrs. Steinfeld is a citizen of this town, and your attempt to arrest her is totally unfounded.”
With that, Mayor Haupt kicked the uniformed men out of town.
For the Jews of Josbach, even their traditional Saturday morning stroll to the synagogue in neighboring Halsdorf had become unsafe. Whenever a flour-mill operator saw them approaching, he released his guard dogs with the command: “Los, fass die Juden!” (Go, get the Jews!) After several incidents, the procession of well-dressed men, women, and children started taking the long way around to bypass the mill.
Military convoys rattled through town almost daily. Once, a group of SA brownshirts stopped and began chanting, “When Jewish blood flows from the knife, that time will be so much better!” A pack of Hitler Youth rode through town on bikes, stoning stores with Jewish names and smashing windows. Even longtime customers were afraid to be seen patronizing Josbach’s Jewish merchants.
In 1937, Paula Steinfeld decided it was time to get her family out of Germany. Several Kattens had already left, including Arthur and his wife; after Arthur’s arrest, they had left to join their married daughter, who had settled in New York in the 1920s. Having come to the realization that Germany held no future for Jews of any age, and no matter their background, other Kattens and Steinfelds, including Uncle Solomon, were taking steps to emigrate.
By then, a backlog of Germans—most of them Jews—seeking entry into the United States had begun to form. Under the Immigration Act of 1924, the U.S. State Department was authorized to issue 150,000 immigrant visas annually, subject to quotas assigned to a country in proportion to its contribution to the U.S. population in 1890. As such, 85 percent of immigrants admitted came from Europe. Quotas were based on birthplace, not citizenship or place of residency. By 1937, when Paula decided to get her family out of the country, Nazi Germany was still open to the idea of Jewish emigration, but the annual quota of 27,270 Germans and Austrians allowed into the United States was filled rapidly.
Given the emigration numbers, Paula was told that the family would go on a waiting list for U.S. visas, but they might not make it to America until 1940 or 1941. There was also the difficulty of finding someone to sign an affidavit of support for a widow with three children. None of the relatives who had made it to America were in a position to accept financial responsibility for the family.
A desperate Paula resolved to get her children to safety, even if it meant doing the unfathomable: sending each one to a different foreign country, alone. In Jewish tradition, her oldest son was expected to carry on the family name, which meant Manfred would leave first. Information about emigration was flowing freely in Jewish communities, and Paula heard about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an organization based in the United States that helped unaccompanied children under sixteen get out of Germany. Due to increased demand, and in the interest of fairness, the group accepted only one child per family. When she signed up Manfred he was just shy of fourteen.
A deluge of paperwork followed: five copies of his visa application; two copies of his birth certificate; a certificate of good conduct from German authorities (which became increasingly difficult for Jews to acquire from Nazi officials and was eventually eliminated from U.S. immigration requirements); proof of good health from a physician; and signed documents from HIAS as well as from Paula’s sister, Minna, and her husband, Morris Rosenbusch, who had left Germany in 1936 and were living on Chicago’s South Side. They had agreed to take Manfred, who knew little English, into their home.
In June 1938, Manfred’s U.S. visa came through, and an early-July departure date was set. He was to take a train to Hamburg, a major port city in northern Germany, which connected to the North Sea by the Elbe River. An HIAS escort would meet him there, and he would join other German Jewish children aboard an ocean liner for the trip across the Atlantic to America.
As part of an agonizing round of farewells, Manfred bicycled fifteen miles to visit his grandmother’s brother. Manfred had an idea this would be the last time they would see each other, and his elderly granduncle seemed to share his feelings. As they said goodbye, the old man reached into his pocket and took out a crinkled U.S. ten-dollar bill that he carefully smoothed out and handed to the boy. “To help you start a new life in America,” he said.
Paula had been warned that Manfred could bring very little cash with him, so she sewed the bill into the cuff of a pair of his pants. Other Jewish families who had sent loved ones abroad gave her another idea. She purchased two seventy-five-dollar Leica camera lenses and placed each one at the bottom of a talcum-powder can, covering the valuable lenses with talcum. She tucked the cans under some folded linens in Manfred’s steamer trunk, which was sent ahead to the ship in Hamburg. She advised her son to sell the lenses in America when he needed money.
Early on the morning of his departure, Manfred said good-bye to his sister and brother and the other relatives who had come to see him off. It was particularly hard leaving his little brother, Herbert, who idolized Manfred in the way younger brothers are inclined to do. They even looked alike; Herbert, although a head shorter, had the same open, pleasant countenance as Manfred.
Herbert always followed his big brother around like a shadow, wanting whatever Manfred had or did; “ich auch” (me too) was a common refrain. As a junior partner in work and play, Herbert was always happy to help with the chores and anything else to get his big brother’s attention and please him.
Manfred held his grandmother’s long, tight hug, understanding that it was likely to be their last. Then he was off, still feeling her teary kisses on his cheeks as he looked back to see her sadly waving good-bye with both hands.
He and his mother bicycled to the rail station in Halsdorf, where they boarded a train for the ten-mile trip to Kirchhain. Once there, Paula bought her eldest son a one-way ticket on the express train to Hamburg. She handed him a folded white handkerchief and ran through some final instructions: keep the handkerchief in his pocket until arriving in Hamburg, then take it out and hold it in his left hand. He would see a lady on the platform with a white handkerchief in her left han
d. She would be his escort, and she would take him to where the other children were gathering to board the vessel.
When his mother had no more instructions, she began to cry. She kissed Manfred and hugged him tightly. She had told him that she was very happy and relieved he was getting out of Germany, and that he would soon be safe in America. But even at fourteen, Manfred understood that what his mother was doing was a cruel opposite to her most basic instincts and to the nature and desire of every Jewish mother he knew: to love, protect, and care for her children.
“Auf Wiedersehen, Mutti,” he said, bidding farewell with more brightness than he felt. After so many heart-wrenching good-byes, this was the one he dreaded the most. He did not want to reveal to her his worst fear, which had been gnawing at him ever since he learned of his upcoming move to America.
Her last words to him, “Be quiet and do not draw attention to yourself,” would stay with him throughout his rail and sea journeys. Stepping into the train compartment, he found a window seat. He and his mother waved to each other as the train pulled out of the station. He could see that she was sobbing now, standing there alone on the platform. His train gained speed, and his mother grew smaller and smaller, until he could no longer make out her figure.
Manfred Steinfeld was deathly afraid he would never see her again.
For Paula Steinfeld, sending her oldest son away, alone, across an ocean to a foreign land to live with others, had been an agonizing decision. Now she prayed this move would save his life and ensure his future, even if she never saw his sweet face again. With a heavy heart, she returned home to Josbach and began to plot how to save her other two children.
Stephan Lewy was seven years old in 1932, when his father, Arthur, a widower for the past year, left him at the Baruch Auerbach Orphanage for Jewish Girls and Boys in Berlin. Stephan’s mother, Gertrude, had been an invalid for several years, and for a time after her death, Arthur had been able to care for his son with the help of a woman he hired to run the household.
Sons and Soldiers Page 4