by Alex Gerlis
From the airport I got a lift as far as Wilmersdorfer Strasse and from there walked to Mindener Strasse. The destruction was quite marked in the area, but our block was apparently undamaged.
I recall waiting outside our block for some time before going upstairs. I feared that, any minute now, someone was going to tell me that my parents were dead. And so I was terribly nervous and apprehensive. I climbed the stairs and could hear laughter and the voice of a man and a woman from inside our apartment. For one brief and extraordinary moment I actually believed that my parents were there, so I knocked on the door. There was a sudden silence from inside and a delay of a minute or so before I heard someone walk down the hallway to open the door. It was a man who came to the door, probably in his early forties, quite big and just wearing a vest and trousers. His accent was a very working class one, from the East.
He asked me what I wanted, in quite a curt manner. Behind him, a woman and two young children appeared in the hallway of our apartment. On one wall I could see a beautiful gilt mirror which had belonged to my father’s family. I explained this was my parents’ apartment, and they had been arrested in 1941. I didn’t know what else to say, so there was a pause. At first, he looked very shocked, but then he turned angry and went red in the face. ‘And what has that got to do with me?’ he said. ‘You can fuck off: I’ve been the legal tenant since September 1941.’
Finding these people here seemed to confirm all my worst fears. I politely explained that the apartment had been illegally taken from my parents and I now wanted it back – that he should move out. The man looked outraged. At the top of his voice he shouted, ‘get lost!’ I shook my head. I find it hard to explain, but I felt confident. I knew I was in the right. Instead of doing as he requested, I tried to push past him into the apartment, although he was far too heavy for me to budge. His wife and children started screaming and he struggled with me. And then he screamed out, ‘dirty Jew!’ Can you imagine, shouting that out in Berlin in July 1945, after everything that had happened? At that moment I heard the voice of Frau Braun, our neighbour. She was standing in the corridor between the two apartments, her thin arms folded across her chest. When I turned round, she gasped and said, ‘Georg. You are alive!’ I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
Frau Braun was the neighbour who’d spoken to Herr Weber when my parents and Horst were arrested by the Gestapo. She was always most kind and proper with us. She was what you’d describe as a refined lady. She said in quite a loud voice, ‘this is his apartment and I can prove it.’ From then on, a terrible row developed. The fat man insisted he had papers and, even if my parents had owned the apartment, they would now be dead so there was nothing I could do about it. He added that they deserved to die. Berlin had been destroyed, Germany had been defeated and it was all the fault of the Jews. He then became very threatening: he had in his hand a broom and was jabbing it in the direction Frau Braun and myself, shouting that if we didn’t leave him alone he’d kill us. I was now most concerned about Frau Braun. She was a tiny lady and just one poke from the broom would have hurt her, so I hurried her into her apartment and as I did so I heard the door of my parents’ apartment slam shut, and bolts ramming home.
Frau Braun’s apartment was very neat. Just about every wall appeared to be a bookcase – it was like a library. The first thing I did was ask if she had seen my parents, or heard of them, since they were taken away, but she said no. ‘But you were with them?’ she said. So I told her I had managed to escape and had been in hiding ever since outside of Berlin. ‘You’ll stay here until we can sort out your apartment,’ she said. We hadn’t really been talking for very long when there was a loud knock at the door. I feared that it was the fat man, possibly with friends. I was afraid, but Frau Braun called out, asking who it was and a man’s voice replied – Herr Tegel, a neighbour from downstairs. He had brought help.
When I opened the door, Herr Tegel was standing there with four British soldiers. One of them spoke to us in the most appalling German. I think he was trying to ask if there was a problem, so I told him in English that there was, and they came into Frau Braun’s apartment. Herr Tegel explained that he’d heard the commotion and had come up to see what was going on. He was watching from the stairwell and recognised me. He‘d decided to go and get help, and had found a British patrol outside.
I told the soldiers my story, or at least a version of it: how I had escaped from the Nazis, had been in hiding and had ended up in Essen where I had joined the anti-Nazi resistance. I showed them my papers, explaining that obviously I had been hiding under an assumed name. The sergeant who was in charge was very sympathetic, but said he would need some proof that I was really Georg Stern. I realised that I couldn‘t prove I was Georg Stern. All the papers I had were in the name of Horst Weber, and any papers linking me with my real identity would have disappeared. I translated this into German. Then from the back of a sideboard Frau Braun produced a package wrapped in heavy brown paper, held together by string. As she unwrapped it I started to recognise the contents: some old school books of mine, my old identity card with the ‘J’ for Jew stamped on it, photographs of me with my parents, including one taken outside this very apartment block. There were notebooks, letters, other papers and some jewellery. Frau Braun explained that my mother had given her this parcel the night before they were taken away. I was now Georg Stern once again.
The sergeant seemed satisfied because we left Frau Braun’s apartment and went over to mine – the three of us and the four soldiers. I was escorted into the lounge, the room my father called the study. The German family were standing by the sofa, looking quite terrified. I noticed on the mantelpiece a pair of silver candlesticks, which we’d occasionally used for lighting candles on Friday nights. They were given to my parents for their wedding. I told the sergeant that he would find my parents’ names engraved at the base of the candlesticks, along with ‘1925,’ the year of their wedding. And when he picked up them up, there was the date and their names, Arno and Eva. By then, the four soldiers had been joined in the apartment by an officer, a young man who spoke very good German.
The sergeant explained what had happened and the officer turned to the German family and spoke to them very politely. They were in the apartment illegally, he said. They had fifteen minutes to gather their possessions and get out. At that they became hysterical, that is the only word for it. The woman and the two young children, both boys, cried and the man ranted and raved. The officer kept very calm, looking at his watch the whole time. With just a minute or so before their deadline, the father said they weren’t leaving. He demanded to see the authorities. Why should a soldier believe the word of a filthy Jew? With that, the officer snapped. He threw a punch right at the man’s jaw, stunning him, then grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and, with the help of one of his men, frogmarched him out of the door. The man tried to push his way back into the apartment. The officer, who was much smaller than the man, pushed him back into the corridor and towards the stairwell. The man stumbled and charged back at the officer but he was ready for the attack, landing a perfectly-timed kick on the lower part of the man’s chest. He went flying down the stairs, backwards. He fell onto the next landing with an almighty crash, clearly very badly hurt. The officer told his men to get the woman and children out of the flat, and said that I should point out what they could take with them.
I was more shocked than anything else – both at the violence and at the speed at which things were happening. Also, I was frightened. I had grown up in Berlin when it was the Jews who were kicked around. What would happen to me – would this man and his friends come back for me? By now, the soldiers had bundled the family into the street, with a few of their possessions. The officer came back to check that I was alright. I explained my story to him again and showed him my Horst Weber papers. He promised to get me new papers in my proper name. He also promised that he would keep a guard on our apartment block to protect not just me, but also Frau Braun and Herr Tegel. The offic
er returned the following day with a full set of papers for me, and also with the offer of a job. I was to be a guide and interpreter.
I worked for the British most days and, in return, I got some money and more food than most people in Berlin. I was able to help Frau Braun and Herr Tegel out: I gave her the food and each night she cooked for us, quite delicious meals. We talked about everything but the war. We mostly talked about the future. Both of them were old socialists, who had somehow managed to slip through the Nazi’s net, probably because they were old and neither of them had been members of a political party. Herr Tegel was quite romantic about the Russians. He even talked about wanting to live in the Soviet sector.
One thing you have to say about Germans is that we are marvellous record keepers. The Nazis were meticulous in recording everything, so the names of all the people arrested and the transports they were sent on, certainly from Berlin – all of that existed. I was able to establish some of what had happened to my parents quite quickly. According to the records, Arno and Eva Stern and their son Georg had been taken to Sachsenhausen after their arrest. Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp just north of Berlin; it was where most of Berlin’s Jews were taken in the first instance.
My parents were on a transport of 1,529 Jews to Auschwitz on 2nd March 1943, but there was no record of a Georg Stern being on that transport. And then I couldn’t find any information about what happened to them after that.
Most days I would go down to a Jewish information and refugee centre that had been set up in the old synagogue in Oranienburger Strasse, which amazingly was still standing. There you could get information on missing people, and it was where refugees registered their names. I had put my name on the list: Georg Stern, son of Arno and Eva Stern. I thought nothing of it. Who’d be looking for me? Once or twice I bumped into people I knew, more by sight than anything else, but in truth I was alone in the world.
As I say, I visited the Jewish centre most days. However, in the middle of September – I cannot remember the date other than the fact that it was a Monday – I attended the Day of Atonement service there. I was not religious, but there would be a lot of people there and I thought I might recognise someone. Don’t ask me who. You must realise that I was nineteen and, apart from a couple of kindly neighbours, I had no friends or family. To have come across a distant cousin twice removed with whom I had nothing whatsoever in common would have been like a miracle. But there was no-one, and I was so depressed I did not return to the centre for quite a few days. I just stayed in the apartment. It was a week before I snapped out of this gloom.
I returned to the centre on Tuesday 25th September. I went to the information desk and gave my name. That was the procedure. You gave your name and if you were already registered they would check on their lists and tell you if anyone had been asking for you. So I gave my name and the man behind the desk nodded and said, in a most routine manner, ‘yes, there has been an enquiry for you.’ Naturally, I assumed this was a mistake. Who would be enquiring after me?
But he went to an office at the back and I was called through, where a nice American lady told me to sit down and then she sat down too and closed the door. ‘Do you know an Eva Stern?’ she asked.
‘That was my mother,’ I replied.
‘Do you know what happened to her?’ she asked. I said I knew she had been on a transport to Auschwitz in March 1943, along with my father. ‘Well, she came in last Tuesday looking for you,’ she said. I was so shocked that I don’t think I said anything for quite a long time after that. ‘In fact, she came in last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We haven’t seen her since.’ Well, I had all these questions, naturally. How were they sure it was her, had they taken an address for her, how was she, how had she survived, what about my father? The American lady was sorry. My mother had been very secretive. She had just drifted in and then out of the centre, refusing to leave any details. The American lady said that she had seen her herself on the Friday. My mother, she said, looked like most survivors: as if they had already lived three lives, each one harder than the other. She said I could remain there as long as I wished. She was sure my mother would return. I stayed there for all of that Tuesday, but there was no sign of her. I arrived before the centre opened on the Wednesday, and waited outside for long after it closed, and still no sign. I did the same on the Thursday.
On the Friday I again arrived early, but there was already a large queue: food was being handed out to help tide survivors over through the weekend. The guards were checking everyone’s papers so I decided to move away until things quietened down at the entrance. By now, I had reasoned that this was all a mistake. If the woman really had been my mother, and she knew I was alive, why had she not returned to the centre? And why had she not come back to the apartment in Mindener Strasse, which was surely the most obvious place for her to go? Anyway, I decided to go for a walk: up Oranienburger Strasse and then down Friedrichstrasse, heading in no direction in particular and feeling taunted at having my mother dangled in front of me only to be whipped away like some cruel trick. I was just approaching the bridge over the Spree when an elderly woman appeared by my side, her thin hands gripping my elbow. This happened all the time, people were desperate for anything they could get. I reached into my pocket for some coins when I heard her whisper my name. ‘Georg.’
I would never have recognised my mother. She had aged and was painfully thin, and her hair was a dirty grey. We fell into each other’s arms and I was astonished at her strength, not letting me go for many minutes.
We walked slowly back to the centre in Oranienburger Strasse, hardly saying a word to each other. They gave us a room where we could talk, but we were both too much in shock to say very much. I recall we both kept asking if the other was alright, and reassuring each other that we were. I realised that we needed to get out of the centre and back to the apartment. Fortunately the centre had access to a car and after an hour or so we were driven back to Mindener Strasse. When I told her we were getting a lift back to the apartment, she got very agitated. ‘What about the soldiers?’ she kept saying. When she’d returned to Berlin in early September, she said, she’d gone straight to Mindener Strasse, but when she got there she saw a soldier on guard outside the apartment block and assumed he was waiting to arrest her, so she went away. She returned that night and the following day, but he was still there so she never returned. I explained that the soldier had been there to protect us.
It must have been late morning when we returned to our apartment. We began to talk. By the time we finished talking, it was dark – that is how long we talked for. First of all, I told her my story. She made me promise to tell her everything, which I did. I told her about the Webers, how they had been killed, how I had been recruited into the SS and had joined this special unit. I told her about our training, about how I managed to escape in Essen and had eventually returned to Berlin. I even told her that I had been ordered to kill a prisoner.
She reacted very calmly, as if I was talking about school, to be honest. When I had finished she said that I had made it through because of my own instincts for survival, and I should be very proud of that. She made me promise that I would never recount my story to anyone else, ever again. There could be repercussions, she said. As far as the world was concerned, I should say I’d gone into hiding and survived. I had been lucky. No one need know about the Webers or the SS or anything like that. I had to promise her. We would never discuss it again, she said. Not with each other and not with anyone else. And that is what happened. This is the first time since 1945 that I have shared my story with anyone.
Then she told me her story – how they were arrested the morning after I left and taken to a police station, and from there to Sachsenhausen. All of this time and for the next few days, Horst didn’t say a word. Thinking now about the way my mother described his reaction, I would say that he was in a state of shock. But then, one night, he told one of the SS officers he was not Georg Stern and that he wasn’t Jewish. My mother,
father and Horst were summoned to an interrogation room. They told Horst to repeat his story. Apparently he never gave his real name: he obviously wanted to do what he could to protect his parents. But he insisted that he was not Jewish, and the real Georg Stern was being hidden by non-Jews. The next part of this story is truly appalling. An officer ordered Horst to remove his trousers and pants. Right there, in front of everyone, can you imagine? My mother said he just froze on the spot, as if he realised what was going to happen. A guard went over and pulled down his trousers and pants. They all laughed because, unbelievably, Horst had been circumcised. My mother said she remembered Frau Weber telling her, when he was about four or five, that Horst had this procedure because of a medical problem. The officer apparently said something like, ‘so, you’re trying to tell us that you’re not Jewish, are you?’ And with that, he shot Horst in the penis and then said, “well, you are now!” My mother said it was worse than a nightmare; Horst was writhing on the floor in sheer agony, blood everywhere. The SS were laughing their heads off, and she and my father had to act as if their son had just been shot. She said my father stood rooted to the spot. She felt she had to go over to Horst but, as she did so, she was kicked out of the way. After a few minutes one of the guards shot him in the head.
My mother said her overwhelming emotion, for which she felt very guilty, was that at least I was now safer. They remained in Sachsenhausen for well over a year. My father was in much demand repairing the spectacles of SS troops, while my mother worked as a seamstress. They had skills, you see. This was how they survived, until they were sent to Auschwitz. My mother told me that the last time she saw my father was when the train arrived at the camp, and they encountered the notorious selection. He was sent one way, she was sent the other. She never saw him again: he’d been sent to a gas chamber as soon as he arrived. My mother survived because when the female guards heard that she was a dressmaker, they took her to a special barracks and put her to the test. After that she spent every hour of every day making beautiful dresses for the female camp guards and for the wives of SS officers. Her unusual existence continued until the autumn of 1944, which was when the Nazis knew that the game was up and they started to destroy evidence of what had gone on at the camp. From then on, my mother was a ‘normal’ prisoner, if that is the right word. Because she was less exhausted than the average woman prisoner, she survived until the January of 1945, when she was sent on a so-called death march. She ended up at the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, in Bavaria. She was still in Flossenbürg when it was liberated by the Americans towards the end of April. She was very ill by then. She had caught typhoid and heaven knows what else, so she was sent to a hospital for liberated prisoners at Dachau, which was quite nearby, and then to a convalescent hospital in northern Bavaria. After that she came back to Berlin.