Under and Up Again

by Edith Noordewier Foley

  Mutti, under a standing lamp she brought, sits by me next to the bed, making me drink fennel tea to help with the bronchial congestion and linden blossom tea to bring the fever down and canned peaches to keep me going. A cool wet cloth is placed on my forehead. An aspirin is placed on a teaspoon and melted down with a few drops of water. Mutti looks very concerned, and I feel obliged to get over my illness. Even after getting better, I have to stay in bed another three days just in case. The floor of the room is washed with a Lysol solution to prevent the spread of whatever sickness is present. Ever smelled real Lysol?

  14

  Our doctor is Frau Dr. Gottschalk. She lives in our block, with an enamel nameplate on the door of her building, visible when walking by her apartment house. We like and respect and totally rely on her. She disappears out of our lives, with so many of our acquaintances and friends, who make up the pattern of our existence. I guess it happened after there is all that broken glass in the street one morning. The windows of some of the shops are smashed in and have lettering on them. It is so very scary. I do not understand. I notice that the park has changed too. The comfortable, inviting green wooden benches have a Star of David on them saying For Jews Only, but not all of them.

  Also, some people have a yellow Star of David on their lapels saying “Jew.” I do not understand but am not inclined to ask questions. There must be a good reason for it, and questions are not welcome. Vati brings the radio into the living room so that we can hear a speech of Adolf Hitler. It is not a speech, but a strange way of talking. Loud, with great pathos and long pauses, to give the audience the opportunity to endorse his statements with shouts of approval. I hear “Sieg Heil” and then the song “Die Fahne hoch” (Raise the flag high), the fighting song of the National Sozialisten. Vati and Mutti look at each other and say nothing; they do not look happy. I feel that this speech has some momentous meaning.

  Somehow, life as I know it is changing. There is a veil of secrecy I do not understand. Comments and questions I ask are hushed without any explanations or answers.

  15

  I am six years old, and I do not feel well. I am in the bathroom. Dr. Gottschalk appears; there is much talk, and I am put on a stretcher and carried down the five flights of stairs and I then remember nothing. Then a white mask is put over my face, with an evil-smelling substance put on it drop by drop. I hear a strange humming and then nothing until I wake up with violent retching.

  That hurts. My belly is bandaged, and in the days to come, once in a while, it is taken off, and white-clad nurses pull something out of my belly. That procedure is repeated three times: operation and belly treatment. I begin to lean over to one side to give more space to my insides. Everyone is so nice to me. I am in a modern hospital with large glass windows and am in a light large room. There is Schwester Erika always. One night I wake up, and I see her sitting on the chair. She suddenly disappears, and next, a large needle is inserted into me. I learn later that I had died. But I continue to live and get better. Two months in the hospital. Professor Seefeld was proud; peritonitis patients usually do not survive without the then-not-yet-discovered penicillin.

  I get presents. Professor Seefeld gives me a Japanese garden on a platform—with a blossoming fruit tree and a Japanese lady under the tree, so beautifully real to life—and a doll made of felt about fifteen inches tall and dressed in colorful Biedermeier-period clothes. I treasure these gifts and take them home with me.

  16

  I have missed the start of the elementary school. There is a problem; Vati is Doopsgezind. Doopsgezind means that, when, as an adult, a choice can be made, fully understanding the meaning of the various religions. Being so very independent, his parents did not belong to a church, therefore Vati has to make up his mind, and Doopsgezind shows him the liberty of choice. That is out of the ordinary in the mostly Lutheran church climate in Germany. Vati has to prove that he is not Jewish.

  Many letters go to Friesland in the Netherlands, our roots. Many a response is received, with proof of baptism back to the sixteen hundreds. Then Micaela and I have to get baptized. Mutti does her best. We are dressed in long lacy dresses. I have lost a few front teeth, which shows in my smile on the photo, and my sister is disgusted, it appears. But all goes well, and I am accepted at the elementary school.

  The first day, I am sent off with an eighteen-inch-tall funnel with colorful pictures on it, full of candy; a leather satchel on my back, filled with a slate in a wooden frame; chalk and a sponge attached to the frame hanging out of the satchel. The school is a reddish stone building next to other buildings in the almond-tree-lined street. I walk to school. The teacher is Frau Frederking, a friendly plump lady with graying hair. I do well in school. Mutti never has to come to speak to the teacher. The mother of another student comes once in while, and we all do not think much of the student after that because the mother makes up to the teacher. A mistake. So there, parents who visit the teacher is a sure sign that something is not in order and is to be avoided. Mine never did.

  Close to the school is a store with nothing but sweets, colorful Gummi bears—a fruity gelatin candy—and things. For a penny, a sweet can be purchased—not often because I had to ask for the money from Mutti. I did not get an allowance.

  17

  Mutti takes me to visit Aunt Minna and her husband, Uncle Max. We have to ride the S-Bahn and then a bus. Both work in the famous Berlin Virchow Hospital. They live in an orderly small apartment. They are hefty people without children. We are spoiled by Aunt Minna with soft-boiled eggs and other foods now becoming scarce. She will continue to be the reason for us to be alive when our existence during the war and after Vati’s death becomes critical in every way. Tante Minna has all the strength and determination of her parents, my grandparents, the farmers.

  I avoid my uncle, her husband, as much as possible. He has a way of pulling me on his lap that somehow makes me not want to be there.

  This part of Berlin called Moabit is a working-class neighborhood. The apartment buildings all look the same: simple, gray, without trees and no elevators. The children of Uncle Max’s brother taunt us when they see us pass by in the street. They are older, probably about thirteen years old, and they wear a uniform with a handsome brown leather knot to hold a black tie, part of the uniform of the Hitler Youth. This gives them status. They know that we are Dutch, which seems to give them the right to call us bad names. They scare me with their show of disdain, with their shouted remarks. Mutti pulls us along to quickly get away from them.

  18

  It is 1935 and a sister is born. A special nurse is present to look after her and Mutti. I look at her in her crib with lace and ribbons and think that she is beautiful. She, however, finds living difficult and lets the world know about it with continued wailing. Feeding her is a real struggle because she refuses to swallow. The nurse, Schwester Erika, tries everything in her arsenal of nursing tricks, even holding the baby’s nose shut to make her swallow. Since she has advanced to spinach, the resulting explosion creates a problem for all. Nurse is dressed in a starched white uniform.

  The doctors have no idea what is wrong for a long time, until a navel hernia is discovered and repaired. From then on, life is better for Micaela. The name Micaela is chosen after deciding that if she is a boy, she would be called Michiel, a family name, and if she is a girl, Micaela is a natural.

  Life with Mica, as I call her, is complicated for me. She is five years younger, and anything I do is being interfered with because she does not understand and approaches games or my toys as a baby does—of course, destructively.

  19

  There is music. Mutti sings her favorite operetta songs and “Parlez-moi d’amour”; there are records played on the Victrola wound up with a handle. When the handle needs to be turned again, the music plays slower and slower down to a whining sound.

  Vati plays the violin. He decides that I have to play the violin too, especially
since he finds a children’s violin to add to his collection of string instruments. The bow is carefully waxed and the instrument is packed in a velour-lined violin case. That is where my interest for the violin ends. I have not the slightest feeling for the instrument and do not like the screeching sound next to my ear. Vati decides that I should try the piano. Herr Ventura is hired. His system is to teach his pupil to play from written music. I did not practice much; repeating the same piece over and over again made no sense to me. When sitting next to me, his pointer, with which he follows the notes I play on paper, has a tendency to slip and slide down the page.

  We give up on the lessons, but I learn enough to play a piece right from the paper. When it has rhythm and melody, it goes really well too. When in music class at school where everyone had to play an instrument, I still hang on to play the piano although a recorder was played by many and could have been my way out.

  I never attended a concert. When I reach that age, Vati has died and Mutti has to keep us going in a very tight household.

  20

  We vacation in Coxyde, a seaside resort in Belgium at the North Sea, an ocean with strong tides and a fine beach. I learn to ride a bicycle along the boulevard at the seaside, admire soldiers in fancy foreign uniforms and playing marches, and fish for shrimp, with a net designed for that activity. It is a wooden bar of about eight inches wide attached to a stick with a net. This is scraped across the sand in the shallow part of the ocean at the beach. The shrimp are tiny and transparent, and there are lots of them. They are a delicacy when cooked. Here I taste for the first time Belgian cooking, baked chicken with apricots. I am amazed; it is delicious and opens up a new outlook on food.

  Vati comes from home to visit us for a few days. We eat strawberries on a terrace by the sea. I decline the whipped cream—it is too rich for my taste. Mutti mentions, “A time is coming when you will wish for it.” Vati must have brought news, a forthcoming war. It is 1938. This is the last holiday I remember with Vati.

  Mutti, Mica, and I traveled back to Berlin by train. We reserved a sleeper with shower. Wagons-Lits is the name on the side of the train. The compartment is lined with polished wood in inlaid designs, and the dining car with white linen tablecloths covering the tables, flowers in silver vases, and crystal lights. We eventually pass through Cologne. Mutti points out a cathedral, one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture. It is lit up and looks bright against the night sky. It is not very long before all the lights in Germany are dimmed.

  21

  Vati is invited to go to Poland; he returns deeply depressed. Mutti and I are walking in town, doing errands one day when I see a familiar face. “Is that not Mr. Horty?” I ask, remembering having seen him visiting Vati. Mutti signals me to be quiet, and we walk on in a faster tempo, not paying any further attention to him. Adolf Hitler is giving more speeches, sounding more insistent, more dramatic, glorifying the German people, pushing them on to more patriotic thinking. He feels that all German-speaking people should be together representing one glorious Germany, which he calls a Reich. So Austria becomes part of that Reich, and quickly, other military actions take place. Then suddenly in September of the year 1939, war was declared. Vati is taken prisoner but is treated as a diplomat and spends time in the Hotel Adlon, Berlin’s poshest hotel, for three days. Then the Netherlands had fallen. There really had not been a declared war at all. German bombers, without warning, destroyed Rotterdam with everyone and everything in it.

  22

  I finished my four years of elementary school, and there are choices of schools, depending on what I wish to pursue in the future. My family, all intellectuals on my father’s side, requires that I should go to a gymnasium. This is a school with Greek, Latin and all the sciences preparing for universities. Hitler does not allow this choice for girls. He believes that they must primarily make families. So Vati selects the lyceum in our area. It follows the curriculum of a gymnasium. A red-stone building where the letters Königin (Queen) Louisenschule could somehow not be obliterated by the Nazis. The stairs from floor to floor are made of dark gray granite, but the classrooms are bright with large windows. We have our own classroom, and the teachers come to visit us for the various courses.

  I like the teachers. I realize now that they are trying to give us an education without the prescribed Nazi dogma. So there is Miss Buchin who is teaching us English but also “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” which we sing with verve, and we learn Shakespeare too. Frau Dr. Seidenschnur is adored by us all. We secretly call her “Strippchen”. She makes us think, creating reasoning. This process has never left me; it is now seen as my arguing. She puts emphasis on Göthe and widens our horizon via large maps of the world on the wall, explaining topographical importance. Why do I remember the map of America so well?

  There is Dr. Zedler who does have the Nazi Party button in his lapel. He also never spouts Nazi doctrine. Somehow, he suddenly is not there any longer. What had intrigued me was his experiment of throwing an object into a girl’s lap. He was expecting that the automatic reaction would be that she would try to catch the object by stretching her skirt. Who knows? We did not stetch. Nobody talked about what had happened to him.

  I have fun with art class and music. There is intense sport, considered a good thing for Aryan youth. One must be strong in body. Being blond and blue-eyed is a plus.

  23

  The first time I hear a siren announcing an imminent bombing raid, I get goose bumps and I shudder. The undulating sound is so penetratingly loud. There is no escape from what is coming; I feel a sense of helplessness. Why should this be happening? What have we done to be punished like this? A cellar area is declared as a place of shelter to go when the alarm sounds. It is obligatory. If missing, Mr. Hartung will make a report. The cellar is reached by about ten steps below street level, reached from inside the apartment building. Benches are placed along the wall. Along the ceiling, all pipes that supply water, hot and cold, are visible, and an escape hatch has been built up and out to the street. There is not much air circulation. At the beginning, the bomb attacks deliver mostly incendiary bombs and are executed by the British.

  Vati stays in our apartment on the fifth floor, the top floor of the building. He is now bedridden with a kidney infection. The winter had been tough; Germany has no coal for heating the winter of 1940-41. Vati sits in blankets to do his writing. Dr. Obst visits daily and is frustrated, knowing about medication being developed against such illness in the United States and totally unobtainable.

  Mutti is spoiling Vati with all the kindness and love she is capable of. To strengthen him, she prepares regularly a raw egg mixed with wine for him. I have a diary, like all the girls of my age. I do not write in it, but it is customary that your friends write in it a nice little poem or some kind words and add small colored pictures. I give it to Vati, and I receive it back with two pages in beautiful lettering saying “Du möchtest vom Vater ein kleines Gedicht, wohlan liebe Edith tue stets Deine Pflicht” (You are asking from your father a little poem—here it is: dear Edith, do your duty always).

  One particular time, after the sirens are blaring and we are going to the cellar, I say farewell to my room; I look at everything, the last is my alarm clock, a Junghans Lautlos. I look around with the most peculiar feeling of foreboding. Vati stays in the apartment. He had had one look at the cellar and could not find any reason to look for shelter there. Sitting in the cellar with Mutti and Mica, the apartment building is hit. Vati, working his way down via the five flights of stairs since the elevator is not to be used during an attack, sees flames and throws the buckets with sand and water, placed outside each door in the hallway, on flames wherever he sees them—not a good thing for him to do because of his illness.

  The apartment building is burning.

  24

  I do not remember what we did after that. I do remember going to school as usual and that I am wearing the same clothing for days. Som
ething is happening to the school too. Classes are held in another building at an unusual time of day. I stand in the school courtyard and we have to sing the Nazi hymn with arms stretched into the Hitler salute Heil Hitler. That definitely hurts. There is nothing glorious to celebrate with song or any other way. Tears are streaming down my face, and I feel so confused and let down. I now experience this feeling over and over again when Haydn’s melody, which Hitler had stolen to march to the death of a nation and a people, is being sung as a hymn at my church.

  We are assigned an apartment of a German countess von Schreibershofen in the Flotowstrasze. I know right away that this is very different. The door to the apartment is made of a beautiful carved wood, opening into a hallway with bedrooms on the left and a bathroom on the right. Deeper into the apartment is a dining room, which leads through a door to the back of the apartment with the kitchen and rooms for the staff. Looking out over the Flotowstrasze are the bedrooms and a salon. The bathroom, dining room, and the kitchen area get their daylight from a courtyard. The building itself is four stories high, and the central staircase, wide and carpeted with Oriental runners. The stairs wind around the elevator shaft, a gilded affair. We are close to the Tiergarten, a park taking up part of the center of the old Berlin, the royal Berlin, with statues of generals and politicians of times gone by.

  What a difference. Our own apartment had been built in 1929 in the art nouveau style. The outside was designated as Neubau, light gray, square, with large windows; the outside finish beige, full of little pieces of glass and pebbles; the street, broad, lined with linden trees. They smell so sweet in the spring. The building entrance hallway has marble floors; the walls, twelve inch green tiles with white spackle. A brass handrail gives support when climbing five marble steps to the landing with the elevator. The art nouveau style is followed through in the apartments themselves: the doors, the brass door handles, the pattern of the parquet floors. Mutti selected a china pattern by Rosenthal with an art nouveau design. I find the pattern again, much later, in a museum as typical of the times.