Once a Refugee - Always a Refugee

CHAPTER 1

BERLIN

As far as I know, my family lived in Germany for nearly two centuries. The family records go back to the 1700s and mention is made of the Bayer family. My great-grandmother, Nanni Freund, neé Bayer, was born in 1833 and lived in a small village called Burgkunstadt in northern Bavaria. Her name often came up if any family member asked, Why does Mutti do that? The reply would inevitably be, Because the great-grand mother of Burgkunstadt did exactly the same. My mother used this as an example to show the very conservative habits of the Freund family.

Our family’s journey to Berlin begins with another grandparent on my mother’s side, known by the initialism H.S.H. (Hermann Samuel Hermann), a much-revered member of the family, who was born into an orthodox Jewish family in 1810. As I mentioned, he too wrote memoirs, which both I and my relative and dear friend Ruth Barash from New York translated. Much of the information I cite below is drawn from these memoirs, but forgive me if all the facts are not entirely correct as the memoirs were hard to read, as they were written in Kurrent (old German script) and also were in poor condition.

H.S.H. lived in a small village called Heinrich near Suhl, where his grandfather was an eminent rabbi and district councillor in Themar in Thuringia. At the time, his father expected that his son would follow in his footsteps but, despite extensive studies with rabbis in local villages and attendance at a rabbinical school in Fürth in Bavaria, taking on the rabbinic position his ‘sainted’ grandfather held, H.S.H. was to follow a different path from his father. He first arrived in Berlin in 1930 with only ‘thirty talers’, and he describes how he was immediately taken advantage of by wicked people and deceiving criminals and was forced to live in dirty lodgings. However, in the end, after these initial hardships, he succeeded in matriculating from the University of Berlin. This experience opened his eyes to new career avenues and perhaps led to his eventual ambitious business enterprise of setting up the first printing works in Berlin. This was highly unusual at the time. Jews living in small villages like Heinrich would typically live and work where they were born and remain in the same occupations for years to come. My mother writes an anecdote about his initial journey to Berlin in her memoirs written in 1950.

His father was Chief Rabbi of Thuringia and he himself studied to be a Rabbi. Then he decided to embark on a fuller life in the capital for which he started in about 1835. He had taken a very cheap ticket to Berlin, but when he came to take his seat, he found that the conveyance was an oxcart! So, he rather lost the money for the ticket and travelled by horse coach.

I particularly liked this passage, as I am always keen to make the past more vivid to my grandchildren and also to demonstrate the Jewish heritage on our side of the family. I will never forget when my grandson Joshua, at the age of four or so, asked his mother whether I was really Jewish. Neither my husband nor I follow the Jewish religion in any formal manner, contrary to Joshua’s upbringing in a traditional orthodox household with observant parents and a long line of rabbis on his father’s side of the family.

H.S.H had been a brilliant student at Yeshiva in Fürth and now was set on consolidating his studies with a secular education at Berlin University. H.S.H.’s move to Berlin to study was a perfect early example of German Jewish emancipation, when German Jews from religious ghettos were both permitted for the first time and sought to assimilate into the educated middle classes, known simply in German as ‘Bildungsburgertum’. In fact, my daughter Janet only recently found a paper online where Deborah ‘Oppenheim’, my great-great-grandmother, is mentioned along with her son (H.S.H.) in the context of German Jewish emancipation:

It required the juncture of very special energies and particularly favourable conditions in order to stand out above the general level. In this whole period it came about but once in the very exceptional career of Hermann Samuel, son of Deborah, from Heinrichs near Suhl.¹

Incidentally, at that time Jews were not allowed to have surnames, even though Deborah appears to have one (although, somewhat disputed by the family). Either way, H.S.H was only given the surname name, Hermann, years later.

In Berlin, H.S.H. met fellow countryman Jeanette Freund and immediately fell for her. They were married in 1837. Jeanette was born in 1806 in Mitwitz and was the aunt of the aforementioned Nanni Bayer’s huband, Ludwig Freund who was the son of Jeanette’s brother Abraham. (In fact, the connection between the Freund and the Hermann family did not end there. Years later my grandfather Siegmund Hermann married into the Freund family again when he married his cousin’s daughter – Sophie Freund, eldest daughter of Nanni and Ludwig Freund.)

H.S.H.’s and Jeanette’s marriage certificate ended up doing them a great service, not just because it sealed their love, but also because it enabled them to move to Berlin permanently. Even though Jeanette was already living and working for her aunt in Berlin, her permission to remain in Berlin had long expired and H.S.H., like all Jews of Saxony, had no citizen rights. This presented an enormous impediment to their marriage, because at the time H.S.H. was unable to confirm his place of residence on the marriage certificate. Furthermore, his wife Jeanette was from Bavaria and deemed a foreigner. It was only through some ‘ruse’, he never explained what he meant by this, but the law officer was somehow persuaded to certify his marriage licence. In this way, their citizenship status was legitimised and they were able to travel to Berlin without fear.

So it was in this way our family fortunes changed when H.S.H. moved from a small mining town to the metropolis of Berlin, where he ended up establishing one of the earliest and most successful printing works in 1887 with the financial support and backing of his wife, Jeanette. Meanwhile, Jeanette gave birth to six children, four boys and two girls, the youngest son being my grandfather, Siegmund Hermann. All the while they succeeded in leading a religious life whilst concurrently running a successful business. It is well worth reading both H.S.H,’s memoirs and Ludimar’s memoirs for an engaging account of how they set up the business.

Over the next four decades, H.S.H.’s printing works grew from strength to strength, especially in its specialism of printing railway timetables, which were so much in demand at the time when rail travel was becoming ever more popular. The firm ended up employing more than 2,000 workers before the war after their merger with the firm Buexenstein. Sometime after Hitler rose to power, H.S.H.’s descendants, who were by now partners in the business, including my Uncle Albert, were forced to sell out at a pittance. This was not a unique episode, but was happening throughout Germany and Austria where the process of ‘Aryanization’ became compulsory after Kristallnacht, meaning Jewish properties and Jewish businesses were confiscated. But this happened many years after I was born, where I begin my own story.

Life started for me in Berlin, Kaiser Allee 24, called by my sister Lilli ‘Kaiserlelee, zwanzig vier’ (mispronouncing ‘Kaiseralee’). As I mentioned, my father was a doctor and carried out his profession in our flat. Each day my pram was put on the balcony, facing the street, with me in it, while my mother took her afternoon nap. Every day she dreamt that the pram would fall off the balcony and that I would be killed. I have often wondered what lay behind this. I am sure I was loved well enough but, in her heart, my mother knew that she did not want another baby. The household routine was already established with two children, Fritz and Lilli, my brother and sister, respectively eleven and ten years old. My mother used to tell me that when Fritz was old enough to stay up and join them in the sitting room, she could not read her book as he was such a disturbing influence, even though he just sat there quietly. Reading in between the lines, it was clear to me that my mother valued her peace and I am, to this day, not so dissimilar.

No one in my family was prepared for my birth, apart from my parents. In those days when pregnancy was not referred to while children were present, my brother and sister were kept in complete ignorance right to the day of my birth on 9th March 1924. They were both old enough to observe some changes in my mother’s appearance, but they must have pushed this into their subconscious. Once my father told my brother, Fritz, Help your fat Mummy off the tram, to which Fritz replied, My Mummy is not fat. As my mother took Lilli shopping in town before Christmas, Lilli admired a baby doll and she begged to have it as a present. My mother hinted there might be a real baby soon, but Lilli insisted it was the doll she wanted, not a baby. On the day of my birth, which took place in our home, which was quite typical at the time (but not so typical when I gave birth to my daughter at home in the 1960s), they were sent to my aunt, known as ‘Tante Helene’. Still, even then they knew nothing about my impending birth. I imagine when I was born it must have been an immense shock to them.

My father loved children, and would have loved a fourth child so I would not grow up alone. However, this was 1924 during the years of inflation, when in Germany money became worthless overnight, and the economic situation deteriorated by the hour. People were forced to spend their money on food as soon as they were paid, while there was some purchasing power left. It was also the period in Germany when the population still suffered the trauma of defeat following World War One and the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Not only the costs of the war needed to be recouped, but the loss of territories and resources also had a severe effect on the economic situation and the penalties of war reparations demanded by the Allies added to the financial crisis. Inflation rose to unprecedented heights; the whole population was hit, and the working classes could barely pay their way, while the middle classes lost their savings. This dark period no doubt paved the way for the eventual rise of Hitler.

As a young child, family life was fairly stable and well organised despite the winds of change in the outside world. We lived in a well-appointed apartment on the first floor of one of the enormous Berlin mansions that had inner courtyards. There was a central staircase running up from the front of the house that gave access to other apartments, as well as a back staircase which led to the kitchens. The cheaper and smaller apartments which occupied the back of the building could only be reached via the courtyard. At the time the concept of inner courtyards providing ‘fresh air’ was in keeping with the theories of the well-known German Jewish socialist architect and urban planner called Bruno Taut (1880–1938). His principle was to always design buildings with ‘outdoor living space’. It became fashionable to maximise light and fresh air in all new developments in Berlin. When I think about it now, I suppose the building where we lived also reflected the class rules of the time; upper-middle class in the front of the building, where our apartment was situated, the lower middle class in the back. In this way, the ‘good address’ where we lived was shared by two different income groups. Even at an early age, I was interested in observing the people living in the back of the building, speculating on the different lives they led compared to us.

Our apartment contained ten rooms, not counting passages and the entrance hall. In my mind’s eye, I can still remember all the rooms and how each room flowed into the other, as was so typical of Berlin apartments at that time. Our three main rooms faced the street. There was the surgery, then my father’s study, with sliding doors to my mother’s salon. His study was decorated using only grey tones, I suppose to give the room a professional edge, while my mother’s salon sported beautiful wallpaper in green and gold silk with an overlay of velvet climbing plants. Then came the dining room, furnished in what I can only remember as a depressing black.

I also recall how a lot of our furniture was unusually large. I have no idea now if the design was Bauhaus or Art Deco, which were fashionable at the time, but what I do vividly remember is the following: in 1938 some of our prized furniture, the larger pieces, were dismantled in preparation for our emigration. The assumption was we would end up in a small flat and our existing furniture would never fit. And so the sideboard and dining table were cut down into separate sections to diminish them, while our easy chairs from my mother’s salon and the main sitting room were left intact because it was impossible to alter their shape. My father must have realised they would hardly fit into any boxy American flat, but he refused to part with them and insisted that their voluminous size would inspire future patients with confidence.

Incredibly, 84 years later we have just unearthed records of this auction from the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg and have managed to conduct a zoom call with Dr Katherin Kleibl M.A. who is in charge of Provenance Research ‘LostLift-database’. She has comprehensive list of every household item we lost from our ship containers and details of the auctions and buyers as well as lists of all our lost artwork (to be researched further). She also informed as that the database will soon be available online.

My father had also equipped himself with what appeared to be a miniature hospital. He had purchased the very latest new and up-to-date medical equipment to set himself up abroad. The X-ray machinery, for example, was so unwieldy it ran on tramlines. And so, these incongruent trappings, new-fangled pieces of medical equipment and oversized pieces of furniture, were carefully packed up to be shipped to the United States. They were sent to the port of Hamburg