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Some inmates at Dachau, like Ernst Dingfelder, were devoutly religious when they arrived. Others became more religious the longer they stayed. And then there were those who found they could no longer believe in God—any God—because of what was taking place. Martin identified with this group. He would, he decided, observe and participate in the traditions and ceremonies he had grown up with, out of a desire to acknowledge his Jewish heritage. But for the rest of his life, he knew, he would just be going through the motions. The horrors of Dachau had destroyed his belief in God.
Prisoners were allowed to write one letter a week, though with Nazi censors reading all outgoing mail, there was little they could say. Martin could not describe the effects of the starvation diet and all the weight he had lost, or the painful, open frostbite sores on his feet that made walking a torment. If the inmates failed to say everything was fine, their letters would not be mailed. Since his letters were the only documentation his family had that he was still alive, Martin wrote dutifully each week. Under the sender’s name was the line: “Concentration Camp Dachau.” The return address included the words Schutzhaft-Jude, or “Jew in Protective Custody.”
On January 1, 1939, Martin turned twenty-one. As he was now of legal age, Uncle Julius was no longer his guardian or trustee of the home his mother had left Martin. How camp officials discovered these facts he never knew, but shortly after his birthday, Martin was summoned to an administrative office and shown a document mostly covered by a blotter. He was told not to attempt to read the paper—only to sign it.
“Was ist das?” he dared to ask.
“Sie haben drei Sekunden.” He had three seconds to sign. “Sonst.” Or else.
He signed, and the paper was taken away. Only then was he told that he had signed a power of attorney allowing his mother’s house to be sold.
Martin Selling knew then that he would not be going home.
PART ONE (#ulink_4638649c-1725-50c2-89f1-0c71745168e0)
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
–STATUE OF LIBERTY INSCRIPTION
by nineteenth-century Jewish poet Emma Lazarus
1 (#ulink_939f77a2-4eb1-5f03-ac74-387ecc9563f8)
SAVING THE CHILDREN (#ulink_939f77a2-4eb1-5f03-ac74-387ecc9563f8)
For nearly twelve years, Günther Stern had the best of childhoods.
He spent those idyllic days in Hildesheim, one of the oldest and most picturesque towns in northern Germany, built along the windswept banks of the Innerste River and surrounded by rolling hills dotted with farms, dairies, and grazing livestock. The town’s cobblestone streets were lined by centuries-old, spire-topped buildings and churches.
Reaching skyward as it climbed up the sides of the Hildesheim Cathedral’s apse was a thirty-five-foot dog rose reputed to be the world’s oldest living rosebush. It was nearly the same age as the town, which is how it got its name: Tausendjähriger Rosenstock (“Thousand-Year Rose”). According to local legend, as the pink-blossomed rose flourished, so did the town.
Since its earliest days, Hildesheim had been the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop, and for centuries the majority of its residents were Catholic. After the Reformation, which had its roots in Germany, many Catholics turned Protestant (mostly Lutheran), and by the 1930s, Hildesheim’s sixty-five thousand inhabitants were divided between the two major Christian religions. There were fewer than a thousand Jews in the town, which mirrored their representation nationally. A June 1933 census found less than one percent of Germany’s population was Jewish: roughly a half million Jews out of 67 million people.
When Jews settled in Hildesheim early in the seventeenth century, they built half-timbered houses with ornate wood-carved façades. The town’s Moorish-style synagogue was built on Lappenberg Street in 1849, an area that became one of Hildesheim’s most scenic neighborhoods.
Günther was a bright and inquisitive boy. He had his mother’s sunny disposition, his father’s intelligent eyes, and unruly ears that refused to lay flat. Born in 1922, he made his first visit to synagogue at age six, when his parents took him for services on a High Holiday. For once, the boy hadn’t complained about being dressed in his best clothes. His mother had told him how important it was to make a good first impression on the Lord. They walked with other families to the synagogue, all dressed in their finest. Smiling passersby stepped aside, nodding to the Jewish procession as it passed, the men lifting their top hats in greeting, again and again.
Günther, the eldest child of Julius and Hedwig Stern, was four years older than his brother, Werner, and twelve years older than his sister, Eleonore. The family was solidly middle class, as were most of Hildesheim’s Jews. The Sterns lived in a rented apartment abutting Günther’s father’s small fabric store, which was located on the third floor of a well-maintained building near a bustling marketplace in the center of town. The apartment had high ceilings and good light. Fine curtains draped the tall windows. Each room had a wood-burning stove for heat, and the kitchen was outfitted with a modern stove.
The two boys shared a room on one side of the apartment. Their parents’ bedroom, where their little sister also slept, was at the other end. The bedrooms had hardwood floors; the carpeted living room had a sofa, two upholstered chairs, and Julius’s dark wood desk. The formal dining room, with a pastoral landscape by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller on the wall, was reserved for special occasions. Günther and his brother’s favorite part of the house was a tile-floored vestibule that served as an indoor playground, complete with a Ping-Pong table that they put to regular use.
Günther’s father was a slight man known for his boundless energy. Julius Stern worked six-and-a-half-day weeks, taking off only Saturday mornings to attend synagogue, where the sermon was in German and the service in Hebrew. He showed fabric samples and took orders in his store and on trips to outlying villages, where he called on customers who made their own clothing. The only ready-to-wear clothes he sold were men’s gabardine overcoats. His wife, Hedwig (née Silberberg), did his typing and billing. A raven-haired woman with dark, soulful eyes, Hedwig had a gift for writing witty limericks featuring relatives and friends.
Günther began his education in a one-room Jewish school. His teacher met the challenge of keeping students of varying ages and grade levels interested and engaged throughout the school day. None of it was lost on Günther, and he blossomed as a serious reader and an excellent student. Günther also enjoyed attending a Saturday afternoon youth group conducted by the synagogue’s charismatic young cantor, Josef Cysner, who led lively discussions about Jewish books and culture.
As was customary, Günther entered Andreas-Oberrealschule at age ten, in 1932. He was one of three Jews among his incoming class of twenty students. Even before starting school, Günther had had many non-Jewish friends; in Hildesheim at the time, young gentiles and Jews easily assimilated. They visited one another’s homes, attended the same parties, bicycled and swam together, and played soccer in the same athletic clubs.
But in 1933, the Nazis came into power, and they immediately started passing restrictive new laws targeting Jews. Hitler pledged to transform the nation: “Give me ten years,” he promised prophetically that year, “and you won’t recognize Germany.”
On April 1, 1933, two months after Hitler became chancellor, the government called for a twenty-four-hour nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Storm troopers stood in front of stores, denouncing the proprietors and blocking the entrances. Jude was smeared on store windows; stars of David were painted across doorways. Local boycotts of Jewish businesses spread throughout Germany. Nazis marched through the streets, shouting anti-Jewish slurs; oftentimes these processions were accompanied by arrests, beatings, and extensive property damage.
Like many Jewish proprietors, Julius gradually lost most of his non-Jewish customers. They were afraid to be seen coming and going from his store; when he went to call on them at their homes, he was greeted by signs that read: JUDEN IST DER EINTRITT VERBOTEN. (Jews are forbidden entry.)
At the time, Günther, though an inveterate newspaper reader, had only a partial understanding of what was taking place in Germany. But he noticed when his friends became slow to greet him and then stopped speaking to him altogether. He found himself being invited to fewer birthday parties, and he was soon banned—along with the other Jewish youth of Hildesheim—from swimming at the local pool and playing on his soccer team. Even his athletic club eventually kicked him out; though he had accumulated enough participation points to earn a medal, he was not awarded it. These were formative years for Günther, and it hurt him deeply to realize he had become an outcast among his peers. The rupture in his young life was unexpected and wrenching.
At school, many of the teachers were replaced by newer instructors, from Berlin and elsewhere, who wore swastika pins and espoused Nazi propaganda. While a few of the older teachers showed empathy toward their Jewish students, they had to be careful for fear of being reported and losing their jobs.
For a time, Günther had a protector: Heinrich Hennis, a bright boy who was a year older and a head taller. More than once, Heinrich jumped between Günther and his tormentors. But all the non-Jewish boys were required to join a Nazi youth organization, and Heinrich was no exception. His leader singled him out for special indoctrination, perhaps because word had gotten around that he was protecting Jews. Eventually, Heinrich also stopped speaking to Günther. Soon, Nazi slogans spouted from the lips of this former friend.
Choir had always been one of Günther’s favorite classes. A few years earlier, his parents had taken him to the world-famous Hanover opera house for a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Ever since, he’d enjoyed music and choral singing. But one afternoon after the Nazis came to power, the choir teacher had the students rise to sing “Deutsche Jugend heraus!” Written a few years after Germany’s defeat in World War I, the song’s lyrics were violent and provoking: “German youth, gather! Slay our enemy in his own backyard, down him in earnest encounters.” Embraced by Hitler Youth organizations for its rousing nationalism, the song had been included in a 1933 songbook released by a pro-Nazi publisher.
It was Günther’s old friend, Heinrich Hennis, who indignantly shouted to the teacher: “How can you let Jews sing a song about German youth?”
The choir teacher stopped and said apologetically, “Our Jewish students will sit this one out.” Günther and the two other Jewish students sat down and remained silent as the class sang. Mortified and angered at the same time, Günther realized the Nazis had found a way to take even music from him.
Throughout 1933, Günther watched as German and European history was literally rewritten. One day, his history teacher came into the classroom and passed out single-edge razor blades. “Take out your textbooks,” he ordered the class, and he began writing page numbers on the blackboard. The students were to cut out the listed pages from their books and replace them with new pages. “Be sure to leave enough room on the margins,” he added helpfully, “so you can paste the new pages into the book.”
Excited murmurs rose up at this unusual assignment. When a razor blade reached Günther, he did as instructed. A few pages into the cutting, he began to read the passages, and realized with a jolt that the pages being taken out of the books all dealt with major accomplishments by Jews.
As the non-Jewish students were subjected to more and more anti-Semitic propaganda, at school and at home, they became increasingly hateful and aggressive toward their Jewish classmates. One day after school, Günther was cornered and beaten up by five boys from his school who took turns striking him as the others held him down. He limped home, bruised and battered physically as well as emotionally.
Nor was his family spared such violence. One night, his father worked late, and he took some letters to a mailbox a block away. On his way home in the dark, he was jumped by several men spewing anti-Semitic curses. They hit and kicked him. A sympathetic policeman passing by found Julius crumpled on the ground and took him to a hospital for first aid. When Günther saw his father the next morning, his father’s face was covered with cuts and bruises.
As the violence and hatred mounted around them, Julius and Hedwig Stern decided it was time to get the family out of Germany. They began writing to Jewish organizations, seeking information about emigrating to America.
A serious impediment for the Sterns and other Jews wanting to leave Germany was a new law passed by the Nazis, which restricted the transfer of cash, bonds, or other assets out of the country. Previously, Germans had been permitted to take out up to the equivalent of ten thousand dollars, but the Nazis reduced this amount, initially to four thousand dollars. As their campaign to plunder Jewish property and assets expanded, the amount was reduced further still, to ten Reichmarks, which was then worth about four U.S. dollars. The criminal penalties for exceeding this amount were stiff, including imprisonment and forfeiture of property.
At the same time, the U.S. State Department was diligently following a special order, issued by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, that required visa applicants to show they would not become public charges at any time, even long after their arrival. If they lacked the immediate means to support themselves, an affidavit was required from someone in America guaranteeing they would not end up on the public dole. The public-charge mandate and the various machinations one had to go through to prove financial independence—something not required of earlier immigrants to America’s shores—reduced the number of aliens admitted from 241,700 in 1930 to just 35,576 in 1932, and became a major impediment to anyone wanting to immigrate to the United States.
Desperate to escape from the Nazis, the Sterns wrote to Hedwig’s older brother, Benno Silberberg, who had moved to America in the 1920s and become a baker in St. Louis. Would he sign an affidavit for the family to come to America? they asked. It was not clear that Benno would be able to help them, but he was their only relative in America.
By spring 1937, school had become so fraught with anguish, anxiety, and actual danger that Günther’s mother and father pulled him out of all his classes. Instead, they hired a tutor to improve his English for their planned move to America. Those easy, bright years of Günther’s in German schools—from the one-room Jewish school where his curiosity was first awakened to the courses, choir, and sports he enjoyed in the public high school—were over. In their place? The sixty-year-old tutor, a graying, stooped, emaciated-looking gentile named Herr Tittel. Beginnning in the mid-1920s, he’d worked as a teacher at a Brooklyn orphanage. But after eleven years, he grew homesick and returned to his hometown of Hildesheim, where he eked out a living teaching English, mostly to Jews hoping to emigrate.
Günther grew to like Herr Tittel, who told him colorful stories about America during their weekly lessons. While living in the U.S., Herr Tittel had become a fan of professional baseball, and he wove grand narrative descriptions for the young Günther, extolling Grover Cleveland Alexander’s masterful pitching and Babe Ruth’s epic home runs. Herr Tittel was easygoing and somewhat eccentric, and would frequently start humming popular American tunes in the middle of lessons. Within a few months, Günther had learned more conversational English—albeit in peculiar German-accented Brooklynese—than he had in three years with his high school teacher.
That summer, Günther’s parents gave him permission to join three friends from his Jewish youth group on a monthlong bicycle trip to the Rhine, a six-hundred-mile round trip. His parents, certain the family would soon be leaving Germany, thought this might be their older son’s last chance to explore the geography of his ancestral country. Once they left Nazi Germany, Hedwig and Julius agreed, none of them would ever want to return.
The boys asked their youth leader to write a letter vouching for their character and wrote to Jewish community leaders in towns along their planned route to find places to spend the night. For most of the trip, families put them up, though in one town the best they could do was sleep on benches in the dressing room of the local Jewish soccer team. All three boys were good bicyclists, and they covered twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day.
In a sleepy river town, they pedaled along the riverside, watching people in canoes and paddleboats enjoying a day on the water. A short distance away, they saw a different scene: a line of docked military boats with heavy guns mounted on their decks. Their steel hulls shone, glinting in the sun; they looked newly built and ominous. Each vessel flew a Nazi battle flag with a swastika. These were unlike any boats the boys had ever seen. It was clear to them now: under Hitler, Germany was getting ready for war.
Günther had been home only a few hours when his parents called him into the formal dining room for a talk. The family never used this room unless they had company, so Günther knew this conversation was serious.
They had heard from Uncle Benno, Julius told his son. He explained to Günther that America was deep in a Depression, which meant that millions of people were out of work. The U.S. government required an affidavit of financial support for immigrants such as themselves, who had to leave their country with no money. But Uncle Benno had lost his full-time job and was picking up only part-time work, which meant he didn’t have the resources necessary to sign an affidavit for an immigrating family of five.
Günther’s father spread out a serious-looking document, several pages in length, on the table.
All this time, his mother had remained silent. Now at last she spoke up, her voice low and solemn. “Uncle Benno’s affidavit has come through for you alone,” she said, explaining that Günther would live with Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel in St. Louis until the rest of the family could join him. “You have an appointment at the American consulate in Hamburg in a few weeks,” she added softly.
“Mutti, I am going alone to America?” asked a shocked Günther. He could not believe what he was hearing.
“Ja, Günther.”
Since Uncle Benno had been able to provide an affidavit for only one person, she explained, it had to be Günther. Neither she nor his father would go without the other; at nearly sixteen, Günther was the oldest of the children. They would keep trying to find a sponsor for the rest of the family and hoped to all reunite in America soon.
It was obvious to Günther that his mother was struggling with this decision as much as he was. He had never pictured this day, and she had never fathomed sending her teenage son away to a foreign country alone.
Perhaps once he got settled in the United States, she suggested, Günther could find someone there to help them. She said this was a serious, grown-up assignment to give him, but she and his father believed he was mature enough to handle it. Most important to her and his father, his mother said, was that Günther would be safe in America.
His father, always the practical businessman, began to describe the logistics of Günther’s trip to Hamburg, one hundred miles north of Hildesheim. He had already worked out a ride for him with a Jewish family who had an appointment at the consulate the day before Günther’s. After what would be the longest automobile ride of his life, Günther would spend the night at a students’ pension, then return home the next day with the local family.
Günther’s father had contacted a Jewish organization in Hanover, which was helping plan his emigration. An affiliated group based in New York, German Jewish Children’s Aid, was taking small groups of Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. Günther would be joining one of these groups. The organization would pay for his ocean passage, provide a chaperon, and make sure he reached his aunt and uncle in St. Louis safely. The group had already sent a social worker to interview Benno and Ethel Silberberg; the social worker, according to her report, had found them to be “kindly, wholesome people” eager to welcome their nephew into their home.
The prospect of leaving without his parents, his brother, and his little sister saddened Günther deeply. Other than visits to his grandparents and his bicycling trip, he had never been away from home for any length of time. Going to America was an opportunity to leave behind the upheaval, suppression, and violence consuming Germany, and visions from Herr Tittel’s colorful stories about America—the land of the free, of baseball and Hollywood movies and pizza!—danced in his mind. Yet, even as he began to dream of these things for himself, Günther was apprehensive about leaving the rest of his family behind. How and when would they reunite?
In early October 1937, Günther stood before a U.S. official who, unbeknownst to the youth, held his future if not his life in his bearlike hands. Vice Consul General Malcolm C. Burke, an impressive, barrel-chested man of fifty, had been in charge of administering immigration laws and regulations in Hamburg since 1924. Günther was lucky that his visa application had been assigned to Burke. Many other U.S. consuls, quick to find sworn affidavits inadequate, routinely denied visa requests. For example, in 1933, seventy-four German refugees had applied to the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam, but only sixteen visas were granted. All but one of the fifty-eight refusals were based primarily on the grounds that the would-be immigrants were likely to become public charges.
For a long time, Burke had been an outspoken critic of inconsistent interpretations of U.S. immigration law. Beyond that, he was a strong believer in having the resources of the friends and relatives who signed the affidavits investigated in the United States, at the place where their assets were located and their income earned, rather than by overseas officials making arbitrary judgment calls. Günther had another advantage in being assigned to Burke: unlike some of his less compassionate, even anti-Semitic colleagues in the U.S. State Department at home and abroad, Burke recognized that Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis and was willing to look for loopholes in the laws and regulations that would allow them to enter America.
Burke had in front of him Günther’s paperwork, including the affidavit signed by Benno Silverberg. The bank balance on the document had been swelled by short-term loans from coworkers and friends, whom Benno had repaid a week after receiving his bank statement. Burke had enough experience reviewing affidavits and financial statements to know when they’d been fudged, but if he harbored any suspicions about the St. Louis baker’s sizable bank balance, he did not raise them officially or voice them to Günther. He asked the boy, in German, for his full name, date of birth, and years of schooling. Then, inexplicably, he asked, “What is the sum of forty-eight plus fifty-two?”
“Einhundert,” Günther responded.
With that simple bit of mathematics, the consul stamped and signed Günther’s Jugendausweis (youth card). Günther Stern had been accepted by the U.S. State Department for entry into America.
Now that he had an approved visa, things moved quickly. Within a couple of weeks, the Sterns received word from the Jewish organization that they had a group of children leaving Germany on a ship to the United States in November, and that Günther could join them.
In late October, Günther’s friends gathered in the Sterns’ apartment for a boisterous farewell party. The event added to his growing excitement—and yet, the whispers of fear remained. Not a single non-Jew attended, not even Günther’s longtime classmate and one of his few remaining non-Jewish friends, Gerhard Ebeling. This fact did not escape Günther’s attention.
Gerhard, a gentile, couldn’t openly criticize the mistreatment of his Jewish classmates by pro-Nazi teachers and students. However, he would occasionally say something quietly to Günther about staying strong during these difficult times. Further complicating matters, Gerhard’s father was a customs official, the type of government job generally reserved in those days for Nazi Party members.
Customs officer Ebeling did something unusual the week before Günther was to depart, however. At that time, anyone preparing to leave the country had to show up in advance at the customs house to have his or her baggage inspected and sealed. Now Herr Ebeling telephoned Julius and offered to come to their apartment, saving the Sterns the labor of bringing in the heavy steamer trunk packed with clothes and family memorabilia Hedwig wanted to get out of Germany. That afternoon, Ebeling placed the official seal on the trunk without looking inside and wished Günther safe travels. In normal times, this would be a small gesture by a friendly official, but these were not normal times.
Günther Stern’s youth travel document, bearing two Third Reich stamps with swastikas, which he used to emigrate to America. (Family photograph)
On October 27, 1937, Günther and his parents—Hedwig and Julius had arranged for someone to stay with the two younger children, both of whom cried brokenheartedly when Günther left—went to the Hildesheim railway station and boarded a northbound train for Bremerhaven. One of Germany’s most vital ports, Bremerhaven had become a hub of emigration from Europe.
After a daylong train trip, the Sterns arrived in the late afternoon and checked into a boardinghouse. Early the next morning, Günther and his parents met at a designated spot on the pier with the other children, their parents, and the chaperon from the Jewish organization. Looming above them was the ocean liner that would take the children to America, the SS Hamburg, a steamship nearly seven hundred feet long that could make a speedy twenty knots at sea. They could clearly see the large German flag flying high above its bridge.
It was time to say good-bye. Günther’s mother was weeping and dabbing her eyes with a hankie. They hugged and kissed. Determined not to feel helpless and hoping to make his mother a little less sad, Günther promised ardently to do everything he could to find someone in America to sponsor them. They would be reunited in America, he vowed, no matter what.
Hedwig nodded as she fought back more tears.
Günther turned to his father, who gave him a hug and a firm handshake. Throughout the Nazi years, Julius had hammered home the need for Günther to remain inconspicuous, to keep unwanted attention from being drawn to him. “You have to be like invisible ink,” he had cautioned many times. “You will leave traces of your existence when, in better times, the invisible ink becomes visible again.”
For several weeks, as his beloved son’s date of departure drew closer, his concerned father had imparted such pieces of wisdom and a litany of instructions. Now, as he draped his arm over his son’s shoulders and drew him close, he had a final word of advice. Speaking softly, so none of the others could overhear, he reminded his son that he would be on a German flagship. He would not leave Third Reich territory until he set foot in America.
The last words his father spoke to him were familiar ones.
“Remember, Günther, be like invisible ink.”
Manfred Steinfeld was born in 1924, between two world wars, in the town of Josbach, located in the very heart of Germany. He would carry with him just two vivid memories of his father, Abraham, both from before he was five years old.
He remembered sitting next to his father, who wore a white robe over his clothes, and watching him as he prayed at synagogue on Yom Kippur.
And he remembered overhearing his father and his uncle Solomon discussing der Krieg (the war). At the time, the little boy didn’t understand much of what they said. Years later, Manfred learned that they had been talking about World War I, and that the Steinfeld brothers had fought in a far-off place called Macedonia, where Solomon won the Iron Cross for battlefield bravery. And that their younger brother, Isador, had been killed in the Battle of Verdun in France in 1916; growing up, Manfred had often wondered about the uncle he never knew whose name was engraved on the town’s stone war memorial.
A short time later, Manfred lost his father. Abraham died of pneumonia at age forty-four, leaving his wife, Paula, with their three children—Irma, six; Manfred, five; and Herbert, three. She took over her husband’s dry goods store, which was the family’s only means of support. They were already living in the house of her mother-in-law, Johanna Hanschen Steinfeld, who helped Paula take care of the children.
Josbach was a town of 419 residents, just sixty miles from Frankfurt, one of Germany’s largest cities, but a world apart. Most of Josbach’s citizens were subsistence farmers, working the land with plows pushed by hand or pulled by cows or oxen; few could afford horses for the task. No one had tractors or other farm machinery, and there was only one automobile in town. The wealth of a German farmer could be measured by the size of his manure pile, which was indicative not only of how much livestock he owned, but also of how much fertilizer he had available to spread on his fields.
There were only six Jewish families in Josbach: three Steinfelds, two Kattens (Paula’s kin), and one Fain. Abraham’s and Paula’s ancestors had settled there in the early 1800s, and by the 1920s, the only retail business not Jewish owned was the tavern. In addition to the Steinfeld store, which sold shoes as well as material and ribbon for home dressmakers, there was a hardware store, a livestock trader, and a confectionery shop. The tradesmen—the town’s carpenter, painter, shoemaker, and tailor—were all gentiles. This collection of businesses and trades provided the townsfolk with all of their basic needs.
Manfred’s childhood home was located next to the town well, and it was the only house in Josbach with running water, thanks to Abraham’s ingenuity: in the 1920s, Manfred’s father had run a pipe the short distance from the water pump to their house. The first floor had a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, one of which Manfred shared with his grandmother. There was a third bedroom on the second floor. A root cellar was used to store potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables from the garden during the winter months. During the summer harvest, Paula canned fruits and vegetables, stocking the pantry. She went to the community bake house on Friday mornings, which by town tradition were reserved for the Jewish women to make challah and cakes for Shabbat.
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.
