by Wendy Lawton
All three of the aunts were much older than Mutti. Tante Friede and Tante Elsbeth seemed frail and tottery to Anita. Had they aged that much in a year? Anita loved all her aunts even though tight quarters meant that tempers sometimes erupted. They forgave as quickly as they snipped and snapped. All five of them worked hard to keep despair at bay. Tante Elsbeth would often start a sentence with “It could be worse …” Anita loved the way she tried to keep their spirits up.
Tante Käte was the youngest of the three. She was the artist and managed to bring some of her pencils and paints with her. She and Anita often sat huddled together, drawing. For Hella’s birthday, Anita drew a self-portrait using only a small mirror. Mutti planned to smuggle it to Hella through their contact in Holland. Tante Käte never gave praise lavishly, but as she held the portrait and studied it, she said, “Anita takes after me. She vill be the artist vhen I am gone.”
Tante Elsbeth took the portrait and studied it. “It could be worse than for our Anita to be cooped up in here with a fine artist who spends hours with her young apprentice.”
Anita had pretty much given up on her education. Hitler’s ever-worsening decrees tossed Jewish children from school to school until they used up all their possibilities. Every week Pastor Hornig asked Anita if she’d been able to enroll in school. Anita knew he worried, but she also knew that finding money for tuition was impossible.
One day, when the pastor came to visit them at home, he handed her an envelope. “Here is tuition for one year of high school.” The high school, König Wilhelm Gymnasium, apparently still accepted Jews. “Someone anonymously donated your tuition.”
Mutti looked at Pastor Hornig. “How can we ever thank you?”
Anita knew that Mutti believed the pastor himself had used his own money. It’s no wonder so many Jews began following Jesus at St. Barbara’s. The pastor loved his people sacrificially. When Ernst Hornig talked about Jesus’ love and death on the cross, the people in the pews recognized that kind of love. They watched a daily example of that kind of selfless love being offered by their pastor.
So, once again, Anita enrolled in school. Hatred for the Jews had escalated since Anita last attended school in Breslau, but she managed to ignore the anti-Semitic posters hung all over school. She carefully avoided the many potential pitfalls by reading signs and making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. Before she even began school, she walked the campus to see all the prohibitions. Jews must not sit here, stand there, eat in this room, study at that table—she figured if she paid attention, she ’d have less problems.
As she tried to curl into her chair in class, she laughed to herself. What a difference from the six-year-old Anita who longed to dance on the famous stages of Europe and whose favorite words were “Look at me.”
Home became her haven once again. When she came home from school, she helped Tante Friede prepare the meal. Rations had reached the point where they could only manage one meal a day, but Tante Friede could season water and somehow make it taste good. Even if they only had a plate of lettuce, Tante insisted Anita make it as pretty as possible.
Mutti worked all day in a factory. They called it forced labor since, instead of pay, they were now forced to earn their tiny welfare check. The whole world had turned upside down for the Jews. The Nazis prohibited them from following their professions, took over their businesses, forbade other businesses from hiring them, forced them out of their homes, and put them on welfare. Then, when they had nothing left, the Nazis expressed outrage about them being a drain on Germany. The answer? Put them into forced labor.
If Anita thought too much about it, she wanted to scream. But, as Mutti would have patiently reminded her, screaming was dangerous. Anita remembered standing in the kitchen with Hella in their Zimpel home all those years ago and stomping her foot at something, saying, “It’s not fair.” Living in Nazi Germany had shredded her childlike sense of fairness.
One evening in the spring of 1941, Mutti had just taken off her coat and hat when they heard a loud knock at the door. “Open up.”
Mutti grabbed Anita, her eyes widening. The knock of the Gestapo had finally come.
A Time to Mourn
Open up!” the voice repeated in harsh German. Two thundering knocks against the old wood followed. Tante Friede sat down suddenly as if her legs would no longer hold her. Tante Käte and Tante Elsbeth grabbed one another. Which one of them would it be?
Mutti went to the door and opened it.
“Käte Suessman?”
Tante Käte stepped forward as the color drained from her face.
“You are under arrest. Gather your things. You are allowed one bag.”
No one spoke a word. Mutti went and helped her sister gather the few things to take with her.
Anita stood frozen. Not Käte. Not now. She looked at Käte’s shaking hands running over bits and pieces of her life. What did one take to represent one’s whole existence?
Mutti turned to the Gestapo’s men. “Why do you arrest her? What crime has she committed?”
Anita’s heart thudded in her chest. No, Mutti! Her name was already on the blacklist. Be careful, dear Mutti. Look down. Don’t draw attention to yourself. But when she looked at Tante Käte’s face, she watched her aunt’s jaw tighten with resolve. Mutti’s bravery in questioning the SS guard had stiffened Tante Käte for the ordeal ahead.
“Being a Jew is crime enough,” the guard said. “Besides, I don’t question things. I get my orders and make my arrests.”
Tante Friede’s head fell to the table as she wept. Tante Elsbeth crouched beside her. “You must be strong for Käte,” she whispered.
“Hurry up.” The younger guard watched the window. “They’re already loading the others into the wagon.”
Tante Käte embraced Anita, running the back of her fingers down her niece’s cheek, wiping away the tears. She kneeled and kissed Friede and then slowly pulled herself up to say good-bye to Elsbeth and Mutti. She took a deep breath as if to inhale the fragrance of her family for one last time, and picked up her bag.
“Hurry up.” As she stepped into the hall, one of the guards gave her a shove, causing her to stumble.
No one said a word inside the tiny room. All four watched from the window as Tante Käte was hurried into the wagon behind the remaining members of the Ephraim family. For once Tante Elsbeth did not say, “It could be worse …”
In the days that followed, the knocks on doors in their ghetto seemed to happen more and more frequently. To Anita it was obvious that movement of Jews out of the ghetto and into concentration camps had escalated.
Twice more knocks came to the Dittman door—first for Tante Friede, and then for Tante Elsbeth. Anita knew she’d never forget those scenes—Tante Friede, bent over with arthritis, clutching her small satchel of belongings, shoved into the Gestapo wagon; and then Tante Elsbeth—pale and silent.
If they had planned to take all three elderly sisters, Anita wondered why they couldn’t have allowed them to stay together. The whole process was inhuman, but sometimes the intentional cruelty still surprised Anita.
Mutti thought Anita would be spared because of Vati, but Anita believed it wouldn’t matter in the end. She worried it would only be a matter of time for both of them. The ghetto and even their own building became less and less crowded. In fact, as Anita walked to school she noticed many old brown-stones completely emptied of occupants.
Amid the war, the bombing, and the heart wrenching loss, life went on. Anita went to school, did homework, and helped her mother. She felt as if she were living one of those eerie nightmares when the dreamer alternates between routine things like school and dinner to bizarre nightmarish scenes of danger and death.
In the spring of 1942, Anita completed confirmation classes with Pastor Hornig. For her confirmation Mutti managed to scrape together enough money to buy a white dress. Anita couldn’t remember the last time she had a new dress. As she stood reciting all she’d learned before her much-loved congre
gation at St. Barbara’s, the fifteen-year-old Anita felt a swelling in her spirit. She wanted to say, “Don’t look at me; look to my Father.”
Just a few days later, when Anita sat in class working on calculus problems, the teacher came to the side of her desk and slammed the cover of Anita’s book. “Gather your things and go to the office.”
She had done well in school for the year and a half she’d attended. Using Mutti’s old rules of head-down, no-eye-contact, don’t-draw-attention, she had somehow managed to stay out of trouble. Of course, trouble tended to come looking for Jews, so she wondered if something was wrong.
“Dittman?” The principal looked up from his desk with a question.
“Ja, Anita Dittman.” She stood, waiting for him to invite her to take a seat.
“Here. This came from the Gestapo.” The principal shoved a letter across the desk with a swagger of his head and shoulders. “It’s high time Hitler cleansed the school of riffraff.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.
What is he saying? Anita read the note. “Only Aryans may now attend school. Because of your non-Aryan status, your enrollment at König Wilhelm Gymnasium terminates immediately.”
“You are dismissed, Judenfratz. Why do you stand in my office?”
Now that Anita no longer woke early to go to school, the days seemed to run into each other. The ghetto had been emptied of all her friends. Her Christian friends could not risk being seen with her. Whenever she could borrow a book, she read. Mutti managed to keep some bits of paper and pencils from Tante Käte, so she continued to draw. Most of her days just seemed to slip away while she looked out the window.
Mutti worked the third shift at the Franz Becker canning plant, making jams and jellies. The heavy lifting required far more strength than a malnourished woman should have been able to muster. She went to work late at night and came home in the morning, so she needed to sleep during the day. With no way of refrigerating food, both Anita and Mutti had to stand in line every evening to get their daily rations. It took about an hour.
“God is good,” Mutti said one night while they walked through the almost empty ghetto to get their rations.
“I know He is, but what makes you say that now? Your sisters are gone, our friends have been taken, the food rations have just been cut in half to all Jews, you work ten hours a day—”
“Enough already,” Mutti said, poking Anita in the arm. “If you keep this up, you’ll have me depressed.”
Anita laughed. She couldn’t help herself. This conversation was absurd. “You mean you forgot how bad things are?”
“No, Mein Liebling. I remembered what Tante Elsbeth used to say, ‘It could be worse …’”
Anita nodded her head. How she missed her eccentric collection of aunts. “I could do with a little of Elsbeth’s wisdom right now.”
“Let’s try to keep our spirits up, then, by thinking of why God is so good. I’ll start. It could be worse than to be walking along on a beautiful fall night with one precious daughter while the other is safe in England. Thank You, Lord.”
“OK, my turn. It could be worse than to be going to get food to fill an empty belly. Thank You, Lord.” Anita laughed. “Can you believe I used the word fill? It’s been a long time since I had my fill of anything.”
When they got home, a letter from the Gestapo lay on the floor where it had been slid under the door. Neither one spoke, knowing it might very well be a summons to appear for arrest. They set about preparing supper as if nothing happened, but the letter sat on the table, dominating the whole room.
“Are we going to sit here all night looking at this awful envelope?” Anita could stand it no longer.
“No. You are right. We either trust God or we don’t. No matter what the outcome, we know He keeps us in the shadow of His hand.” Mutti opened the letter and read.
Anita watched her mother’s face for any reaction. “What?”
Mutti let her breath out slowly. “It could be worse than for you to have to report for slave labor.” She smiled. “They assigned you to Franz Becker—my factory. Had they realized, they never would have allowed it.”
Anita sat down. “God is good! Oh Mutti …” She buried her head in her hands and let hot tears spill out.
Working ten hours a day was far easier than moping alone at home. And working at the canning factory had its benefits. When the factory made apple butter, they tossed the occasional wormy apple aside. The workers were not supposed to take these, but rather than see them end up in the dustbin, Anita slipped more than one of these into her pockets. When she smuggled them home, the wormy parts could be cut out and the good bits eaten.
As they moved into winter, work extended into Sundays, so Mutti and Anita could no longer go to church. Pastor Hornig often came into the ghetto at night to bring them Communion. On Christmas of that year, Mutti and Anita found themselves with a day to attend St. Barbara’s. It felt like coming home.
Pastor Hornig preached boldly, despite knowing that Nazi spies watched his every move. “God is greater than the combined evil of the entire Third Reich,” he preached in that rich, resonant voice.
Anita believed Pastor Hornig even though Hitler’s evil terrified her.
“God is in control of the war, and He’s in control of your lives,” he assured them. “He will preserve some of His saints.”
Anita remembered the verse from Isaiah that told of the preservation of the Jewish people, “I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand—I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” Heavenly Father, put Your words in my mouth.
After church, Pastor Hornig took Mutti’s hands in his and said, “You heard what I said about God preserving some of His true saints?”
Mutti nodded.
“I feel certain God will preserve you and Anita. You must be His witnesses no matter where He takes you.”
Anita knew she would never forget that Christmas. She made a commitment to be a faithful witness, no matter what.
Anita knew they lived on borrowed time, but another year went by and they still lived quietly in the ghetto. Anita had been moved to a wine-bottling factory, but the pattern of work, food lines, and sleep continued.
She and Mutti found new hope that winter as the Nuremberg law passed. It stated that if a Jewish man or woman had ever been married to a German, they were protected from arrest or concentration camps as long as they did not revert to the Jewish faith. All children born to those marriages were protected as well.
Pastor Hornig warned Mutti not to put too much stock in the law. He’d already seen it violated more than once. But Mutti felt it represented one more protection.
So when an early dawn knock came on a cold January day, Mutti was not prepared.
“Quick, Anita, look out the window. That cannot be the Gestapo, neh?”
Anita’s stomach twisted as she saw the Gestapo wagon with SS guards fanning out in several directions. She recognized the drill and looked at Mutti. No words passed between them.
Mutti leaned her head against the door for just a moment. Anita recognized the posture of resignation. As she opened the door, the SS guards only saw strength.
“Hilde Dittman? You have three minutes to pack one small bag. You are being arrested.” The older officer barked these orders like he could say them in his sleep. Mutti had to sign a paper stating that everything in the apartment belonged to her. A younger guard took red labels and tagged all the furniture.
Except for the throbbing ache in her stomach and the swelling of her throat, Anita felt numb.
“Your possessions now belong to the state. A careful inventory of your things will be taken and someone will be by later to pick them all up.” He stood first on one foot and then the other as if irritated that the efficient process required explanation.
“What about the Nuremberg laws?” Mutti’s voice held the edge of desperation. “I married a German and
I’m a Christian.”
The SS guard laughed a loud explosive laugh. “What are you, lady? A lawyer?” He continued to laugh as if that was the funniest thing he ’d heard.
“You cannot tag all the furniture. It belongs to my daughter.” Mutti sounded outraged.
“We didn’t tag her bed. If she wants the rest, the Gestapo will sell it back to her.” His impatience boiled over. “Step it up, Hans, get on with it. Dittman’s got pitiful few things as it is.”
With that, the younger man finished tagging and logging the last piece. He turned to Anita. “You can ride along with us to the synagogue where we will hold the prisoners if you like and say good-bye to your mother there.”
“Thank you. I will.” It would give Anita and Mutti a little longer.
“I need to use the bathroom, young man.” Mutti said to him, in that motherlike voice of hers that allowed no argument.
He shrugged an approval of sorts while the other man began looking antsy.
Mutti went inside. When she came out, she nodded her daughter toward the bathroom. Anita understood that Mutti must’ve left a message.
“Please wait while I go.” Anita stepped inside before anything could be said. There on the edge of the sink lay a tiny leather purse containing a modest bundle of money. It represented every penny Mutti had been able to save. Anita tucked it into her waistband and came out.
“All right. Let’s go,” said the older man.
As he loaded them into the wagon, he raised his eyebrow at Anita as if to say, “This won’t be the last time you make a trip in a Gestapo wagon.”
Summoned by Name
When the Gestapo guard forced Anita to leave the old synagogue where Mutti had been taken, the mother and daughter only had enough time to embrace. Words were far less important than the familiar physical closeness. Anita breathed deeply to take in the very scent of Mutti—that mixture of soap, lavender, and sugary-fruity scent of the jam factory. How she would miss Mutti.