Crumstadt, Germany

My mother’s cousin, Elisa Levi, recently sent this email after reading, Is It Night or Day?. When Elisa was a child, she and her family fled Crumstadt, Germany for Uruguay. My mother and Elisa have corresponded and visited each other since 1938, the year my mother left Germany.

Dear Edith:

I finished reading Fern’s book. It made me relive all the sorrows and fears I experienced in Germany in school and on the streets of Crumstadt the year before my departure. I also remember the first months in Montevideo when my mother read us the letters from your mother, which talked about your trip to the US and your relationship with Aunt Mildred. Even though I was unable to say it then, I felt for you and I suffered with you.

I think the book is profound and touching. I sense there is a deep feeling between you and Fern. I can imagine it. You certainly must have suffered a lot again.

Love,

Elisa

1938- my grandmother, my mother, my grandfather. This is the last picture of my mother’s family, taken just before she was sent to America.

Neurobiologist Eric Kandel wrote in his work, In Search of Memory, that people have the desire to destroy people outside the group to which they belong. “There may be an innate response,” he writes, “that is capable of being aroused in almost any cohesive group.”

In my mother’s town, Stockstadt am Rhein, a village of 2,000 people and two Jewish families, that phenomenon was evident in 1938.

My grandfather was a respected civic leader in town, which his family had helped settle in 1721. No farmer in the area could bring his crops to market without the services of my grandfather, Siegmund Westerfeld. In addition, my grandfather introduced the cucumber as a cash crop. His family had the first telephone and the first car in the area. The family was assimilated into the town and he served as a trusted lender to many members of the community. In fact, most families in the town had borrowed money from my grandfather; that way, they could stay solvent and keep their farms afloat.

When Hitler came to power, as Kandel puts it, “the successes of the Jewish community generated envy and a desire for revenge among non-Jews.” The townspeople of Stockstadt did nothing to defend or protect Westerfeld and his family. After all, how convenient it would be if the town lender would simply disappear and the loans would be eradicated.

A member of a family who had borrowed money from my grandfather came to me about ten years ago and cried. “My father  owed your grandfather a great deal of money,” she said. “I feel that his blood is on my family’s hands.”

Note: For a larger discussion on this subject, please visit www.shadowsoftheholocaust.com.

Note: A reader sent me the following article about another rescue effort.

The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. It is a German product – precise, minimalist, and utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty. E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany ’s most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.

And Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, “the photography industry’s Schindler.” As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as “the Leica Freedom Train,”
a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were “assigned” to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.

Leitz’s activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany. Before long, German “employees” were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.

Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom — a new Leica. The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.

The “Leica Freedom Train” was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes’ efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?

Leitz, Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz’s single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz’s daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland . She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the “Leica Freedom Train” finally come to light. It is now the subject of a book, The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train, by Frank Dabba Smith.

Since the 1940s, one of the few ways American Jews protested the Nazi regime was to refuse to buy certain German products. High on the list was the Mercedes. (Volkswagon and German wine were other targets.)

In 1998, things got complicated when Chrysler Corporation bought a majority share of Mercedes manufacturer Daimler-Benz. Then, some newspapers and magazines asked Jews if they now would begin to boycott Chrysler. Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick said that, as a “private memorial” to the Nazis’ victims she would boycott Chrysler.

Some survivors and refugees continue to boycott German products even today. But in the global economy, it is increasingly difficult to know who owns a product.

It’s debatable whether the boycott was effective. But it’s clear that the boycott didn’t make a dent in the financial portfolio of the man who brought the world the Mercedes.

Frederich Flick was one of Germany’s biggest tycoons of the 20th Century. In addition, the Allies listed him third of 42 industrialists most responsible for Nazi crimes.

1990 - Edith (wearing corsage) reunites with elementary school classmates,
52 years after she last saw them.

One of my mother's German classmates from elementary school
just finished reading Is It Night or Day?. He sent my mother
his reaction to the book in this email. My good friend Frank Nordt
translated the letter from German to English below. 

Liebe Edith,

Fern`s Buch habe ich nun zweimal gelesen und es stets bedrückt,
traurig und betroffen aus der Hand gelegt.
Immer wieder ist mir Sigmund Freuds (??) Wort in den Sinn gekommen:
"Der Mensch ist des Menschen Wolf."
Goethe hat es behutsamer gesagt:

   Alles geben die Götter, die unendlichen,
   Ihren Lieblingen ganz:
   Alle Freuden, die unendlichen,
   Alle Schmerzen, die unendlichen, ganz.

Die Zeit, Schweres zu ertragen und zu vergessen, ist zuweilen
dereinzige Trost und Helfer.

Dear Edith,

I’ve now read Fern’s new book twice and I always put it down feeling sad, depressed, and dejected. Freud’s words ??? (actually, Thomas Hobbes’ words) always come to my thoughts: “Man is Man’s Wolf.” (The meaning of the phrase is “Man is a wolf to his fellow man.”) Goethe said it in a more gentle fashion:

The gods give everything, the infinite ones,
To their beloved, completely,
Every pleasure, the infinite ones,
Every suffering, the infinite ones, completely.

The pain of that time is heavy to bear. To forget is sometimes the only relief.

Passport photos: Gerda Katz and Edith Westerfeld

In our quest to find my mother’s old friend, “Gertie Katz,” we discovered that my mother had the wrong spelling of her friend’s name.

That’s not surprising, given that the two knew each other when they were 12 years old — seventy-three years ago.

The two girls immigrated together on the Deutschland. The ship left Bremen, Germany on a cold, gray day, March 8, 1938 and arrived in New York City on a sun-splashed March 19, 1938. Gertie and Edith became inseparable on the ship. (See blog below: WANTED (by Edith) Gertie Kahn of Seattle)

We contacted the One Thousand Children Foundation (OTC), asking for any information about “Gertie.” Here is the response from the OTC that identified our error:

dear edith,

yes, there is a gerda katz in the otc database who arrived in the us on 3 19 38 but we have never found her. perhaps you can find a lead from the archivists at YIVO (http://www.yivo.org) where indivudual otc childrens’ files exist.

good luck

Ahhhhh, GERDA KATZ.

Here is the passenger record the OTC included in the email:

Lost childhood

From reader Karin Gordon:

“The one scene in the book, Is It Night or Day?, that stays with me is the young boy who lay curled up on the deck crying he wanted to go to the zoo. I was without my parents for several years during the war.

“The Germans walked into Denmark in 1940 when I was two years old. When I was four, the Germans took our house, the Resistance movement bombed the milk factory where my father worked. (The Resistance bombed anything that could be of help to the Germans, in this case, milk and butter.) No one could take in a family of four so we were scattered like unwanted puppies.

“For three years, I stayed with different aunts and uncles and once with a friend of my mother’s. Some treated me well, one undressed and beat me for no reason – I was so sick at that place I couldn’t eat but threw up constantly (while they taunted me). My father came one evening on his bicycle, saw my condition, put me on the crossbar of his bike, but had nowhere to take me, so he dropped me at a cousin’s house on the way to the town where he had a room. I had no idea where the rest of the family were. I saw one of my parents on occasion. No one wanted to talk about it afterwards.

“We were united in a flea-infested flophouse near the end of the war in 1945. The other lodgers were pimps, whores, black market racketeers. the owner was a witch. My mother broke down and continued breaking down resulting in long stays at a sanatorium. This led to me being farmed out again, to a lovely aunt, but I was desperate for my mother.

“I remember how terrifying it was not to know when I’d see my parents again. My aunt once told me I’d get to see my mother in ‘two weeks,’ but I didn’t know how long that was.

“We were not united with our family in our own apartment until I was 11, but my mother remained threadbare, unavailable.”

The Deutschland

Gertie Katz (from an unknown German town) and Edith Schumer (my mother) of Stockstadt am Rhein immigrated together on the Deutschland. The ship left Bremen, Germany on a cold, gray day, March 8, 1938 and arrived in New York City on a sun-splashed March 19, 1938. Gertie and Edith, who were both 12 years old, became inseparable on the ship.

“We had so much in common,” Edith says. “We both left our parents and we turned to each other for support during the passage. She immediately became my best friend since I didn’t have many friends left in Germany.”

Passport photos: Gertie Katz and Edith Westerfeld

When the two girls parted in New York, Gertie gave Edith this photo. On the back, she wrote 21 März 1938. Zur Erinnerung Deine Freudin, Gertie Katz. “March 21, 1938. For remembrance. Your friend, Gertie Katz.”

“Gertie didn’t know where she would be living,” Edith remembers. “All she knew was that she would be placed in a home with strangers in Seattle. I gave her my address, but I never heard from her again. I always wondered what happened to her.”

That was 72 years ago.

“Gertie?” Edith says, “I’ve thought about you all these years. I’d love to hear from you or your children.”

Edith’s email is edielar@aol.com.

Both books, Is It Night or Day? and Motherland, tell part of this story.

In 1988, fifty years after Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken
Glass,” churches marked the mournful occasion by creating a “Night of
Remembrance.” Services were held, candles lit, names of survivors and
escapees read at memorials and churches. During those ceremonies, many
church leaders asked elder members if they remembered the Jews who once
lived in their towns. 

A grass-roots movement emerged and Germans began to research the Jewish
families who once lived in the area, restore the local synagogues, and
create organizations formed at that time to remember the Jews and
their contributions in Germany.

In 2004, when I received an award for my first book, one such organization,
“The German Society to Preserve Jewish Culture," sent one of its members to
attend the ceremony. This organization also helped find a publisher for the
German edition, Mutterland.

Now, the Society is wishing me well on my new book.
Here is the email I received from one of its members:

Dear Fern,

Greetings and congratulations from your friend Christa, living in "Motherland"-
Stockstadt, and from all friends and members from the Förderverein für jüdische
Geschichte und Kultur in the region/area from Riedstadt and Landkreis
Groß-Gerau. (The German Society to Preserve Jewish Culture in the cities and counties
neighboring my mother's hometown, Stockstadt.)

We are so thankful for your work. I am sure, it means healing for Edith and
peace in the hearts of the more than 1000 "children" reading your new book!

Wishing you all the best for your work and reading.
Your publications open doors. Don't stop writing. 

Big hug,
Christa

Pictured here: In 2009, my German friend, Christa Schreck, showed
my American friend, Bob Konrardy (and his wife, Maggie), around my
mother's home town in Germany.