2
The Gestapo Arrives
FOR MY FAMILY, 1942 was the year in which we could no longer deny that a storm was brewing, a storm that would darken the skies of Germany’s Jews. Hitler was now putting his final plans for the destruction of the Jews into action. Prior to this, we had stuck our heads in the sand, hoping that the rumors were untrue. There had been no shortage of threats and rumors: rumors about oppression, rumors about arrests and abductions. Our lives were consumed by rumors and up until then, we had closed our eyes to them. This was the tragic mistake made by many Jews, one that would allow Hitler’s storm to spread throughout Germany until, ultimately, we would all feel the destruction.
By this time, conditions for the Jews of Germany had deteriorated drastically. We were not allowed to use public telephones or, except under special circumstances, public transportation. We were required to give all winter clothing, blankets, and coats to the authorities, who shipped them to the troops at the Russian front. Tobacco, milk, eggs, fish, radios, telephones, and many other products were forbidden to Jews. Jewish children were banned from attending public schools. Jews were not allowed to own pets. The list continued to grow until anything like a normal life became impossible.
But by March 26, the rumors and threats had become a reality.
For us, as well as many thousands of other Jewish families, the shape that reality took was in the form of a visit from the Gestapo.
On that day in 1942, I was sitting with my parents in the small kitchen of our Berlin apartment at 70 Koepenicker Strasse, eating lunch, when we were startled by a loud, insistent knocking.
“Herr Lewin? Open the door at once!” The voice was imperious and brooked no delay. We were all a little slow to react. It was unusual for us to have visitors at all these days, and even more so for them to come at mealtimes. I looked at my mother. Her hair was, on this day like all others, piled up in a bun.
“I’ll get the door, Mutti,” I said. “You sit.”
I walked down the hall to the door and, with some hesitation, opened it.
Two men, both dressed alike in long, dark leather coats and wide-brimmed hats, stood there. Their facial expressions were as much alike as their clothing, both of them harsh and frowning, without the slightest trace of warmth. Not saying a word, the taller of the two immediately pushed past me, forcing his way into the apartment.
The Gestapo were the Nazis’ secret police force. The mission of the Gestapo was, first and foremost, the elimination of certain sections of the German population, especially the Jews. The Gestapo planned and executed campaigns that eventually transferred millions of Jews, from all over Europe, to slave labor camps or death camps. They were the elite of Germany’s police organizations: highly professional, totally ruthless, and completely loyal to Adolf Hitler.
“Herr Lewin?”
My father appeared from behind me. As he caught a glimpse of the two men, his face lost color, becoming ashen against his salt and pepper hair.
One of them said, “Herr Lewin, we are here to assist you.”
This, I later learned, was an infamous Gestapo tactic. Rather than upset the intended victims, the Gestapo would assure them that they had their best interests at heart and that they wanted to help the Jews in these troubling times.
My father continued looking at them, silent.
“You have nothing to worry about, Herr Lewin. We are merely relocating you. You and your wife and son have ten minutes. You must each pack one suitcase.”
My mother appeared, moving up behind my father. She started screaming, “What’s going on? What’s going on? What are you going to do to us?”
The Gestapo agents told us that we must hurry, that we must grab our belongings and prepare to depart. Faced with the prospect of being forced from her home, required to instantly abandon all that was familiar and beloved, my mother soon became frantic.
Johanna and Leopold Lewin, my parents. Berlin, 1921.
“Where are we going?” she wailed, “What’s going to happen to us?”
She ran back and forth in frenzy, vainly trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. My father, on the other hand, tried to remain stoic throughout the entire episode. I suppose he might have been trying to project an attitude of tranquility to reassure us, but the ashen color of his face told of the price he was paying for remaining calm.
The Gestapo watched us closely, stone-faced and businesslike. Like most German Jews, we were familiar with the reputation of the Gestapo. Whatever they might say and regardless of what claims they might make, one thing we could be sure of was that they had not come to help us. This day was a culmination of events that had been many years in the making, a day that every German Jew knew, in his heart, must come. The Gestapo knew their business and the goal of that business was the obliteration of our race.
What made them most terrifying was their businesslike demeanor, the everyday, conversational tone of their voices. They certainly knew that they were likely sending us to our deaths, but they showed no more emotion than most men would show while taking out the trash.
The business of rounding up Jews was now a well-practiced routine. Before Hitler’s rise to power, the Jewish population of Berlin had numbered around 165,000. By 1942, emigration, deportation, and outright murder had decreased that number to around forty thousand. The Gestapo had perfected their techniques and carried out the deportation of Jews with typical German efficiency.
I walked into my parents’ bedroom to find my father grabbing suitcases from a stack neatly piled beside the armoire. My mother was crying and her eyes were darting back and forth, back and forth, looking for a place to begin.
She screamed again and ran to her little freestanding jewelry chest. She didn’t have much, nothing very expensive, but everything she had was a gift of the heart, given to her by my father on special occasions. Whimpering, tears streaming down her face, she pulled out symbols of their love. There was a necklace, a few pairs of earrings, and a ring or two. She put each of these into a small cloth drawstring bag and sighed loudly as she placed it in her suitcase.
A moment later, I felt the presence of the Gestapo men behind me. They had closed the front door and followed us into the bedroom. They could have been statues, their expressions devoid of any human emotion. But now, seeing my mother in hysterics, they grew impatient. The face of one of the agents reddened, becoming suffused with blood as his temper flared and he began shouting:
“Schnell! Schnell! You must hurry! Further delay will not be permitted!” I watched in horror as my parents forced themselves to continue their terrible task.
My mother darted over to the dresser, yanked open a drawer, and rifled through it. She searched frantically through each neat pile of clothing. Back and forth, from the armoire to the dresser she ran, pulling out the drawers, anxiously looking at all the clothes, letting out a heartbreaking wail every few seconds, beside herself. She would throw an item into the suitcase, then take it out again screaming “Oh no!” and would run to put it back in the dresser drawer.
Then I felt a powerful hand grip my shoulder.
“You! You too must pack your bag. You must be ready to go or suffer the consequences. We will not wait for you. Go!”
My father looked at me as he handed me the third empty suitcase. Again, he said nothing. His eyes looked glazed and heavy. He just stared at me, holding my glance for a moment, then nodding his head. I felt, in that instant, that I understood why my father was acting in this manner. He had given up.
He was in an impossible situation. I believe that he knew of the fate that awaited us. He was much too intelligent a man to accept their tale of “relocation.” Cooperating calmly with the Gestapo was therefore unacceptable. And yet, if he fought back, he would be placing my mother and me in mortal danger. That was also unacceptable. He was trapped and he knew it. It was the only explanation for his uncharacteristic apathy.
I walked out of the room and turned down the hall, moving toward my bureau. The second Gestapo agent followed me, his boots clicking loudly on the wooden floor. I opened the drawers, took out a few pairs of underwear, socks, and a couple of long-sleeved shirts and put them into my tiny suitcase. Then I retrieved my toothbrush and a bar of soap and put them with my other belongings.
I walked back down the hall and turned the corner, back into my parents’ bedroom. Catching sight of me, the first Gestapo man yelled, “Enough is enough! It is time to go!”
My mother wailed, “But I haven’t finished! I can’t possibly be finished! I haven’t decided what to take!” The Gestapo man walked over to her suitcase. “You’re done. Don’t worry about it.” He shut her suitcase and clicked the locks shut. My mother began screaming anew.
Already in her coat, she walked two steps over to me and looked into my eyes. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she asked. “No, Mutti,” I said gently, “there isn’t.” I took my mother by the hand and led her out of the apartment, with the second Gestapo agent following close behind. As we walked out, he shut the door behind us, giving us no chance for a last look at our home.
Many people have wondered why the Jews did not leave Germany when the persecution began, but in fact many Jews did leave. My father had himself sought to emigrate, trying first at the Bolivian consulate and again at the consulate of Chile, attempting to get visas for our family. On the occasions when I would accompany him, lines of desperate Jews would stretch around the block several times. It was not uncommon that a husband would wait in line for eight hours and then be relieved by his wife, who would stand in line while the husband went home to sleep.
Eventually, other countries stopped accepting applications for emigration. Unless one had relatives in another country willing to accept responsibility or had exceptional financial abilities, emigration was no longer a viable means of escape. We were trapped in Germany and the only way the Nazi government would allow us to leave would be in cattle cars or coffins.
The German government did everything in its power to keep the eventual fate of the Jews top secret in order to avoid widespread panic. They wanted to prevent a public outcry from Germans of good will and from citizens of other countries. The Nazis went to great lengths to assure Jews that they would be safe in the “resettlement” areas, even persuading them to bring along their valuables, ostensibly to help them start new lives. In reality, they would steal everything of value that we possessed. Nothing of consequence escaped their grasp. They shaved the hair from the heads of dead Jews to be used for industrial purposes and removed gold fillings from their teeth to make trinkets and jewelry for the wives, daughters, and girlfriends of high-ranking SS officers.
One possible avenue of escape had been presented to us some years earlier, when my father’s older brother, Benjamin, visited us in Berlin.
Uncle Benjamin had shocked my father’s family in Kovno by leaving home at the tender age of eighteen. Somehow, he managed to make his way through Europe to the United States. There, he became a very successful restaurateur in New York City. He married and had a son, Stanley.
Around 1934, Benjamin decided to return to Kovno, with the goal of becoming reconciled with his father and the rest of his family. His visit was successful, and on his way back to New York, Uncle Benjamin stopped in Berlin to consult a famous specialist about a heart condition. He also used the opportunity to pay us a visit.
Seeing our apartment was something of a shock for Benjamin. He was wealthy, and we were living in very modest circumstances. My father had recently started his business in a basement shop and money was tight.
Uncle Benjamin insisted on taking me shopping. He hired a car with a chauffeur. I’d never been in a private car before, much less one with a chauffeur. We drove to one of the largest and most famous department stores in Berlin—Hermann Tietz. I suppose the car must have likewise made an impression on the management, as they provided a special representative to make the rounds with us.
After an extended shopping spree that exceeded my wildest dreams, the store provided a van and delivered all the merchandise to our apartment on the same day. My parents were aghast as the deliveryman brought item after item after item inside our tiny apartment. They berated my uncle: “This is not necessary!” “He does not need all of this!” and finally, “We have such a small apartment here on Paul Singerstrasse 38, where will we be able to put all of this?”
My uncle just smiled and ignored them. Then he sat down and told my father that we must all emigrate to New York, where he would help us resettle. He said Germany was becoming too dangerous for us to remain. We must allow him to sponsor us to come to America.
My father would not hear of it. He and my mother were absolutely opposed to the idea. “Absurd,” they said, and Uncle Benjamin left.
Benjamin wrote my parents again, urging them to consider emigration. Again they said no.
Then, in 1936, Benjamin wrote that a friend was coming to Berlin for the Olympics and that he would carry a message for us. Benjamin’s friend arrived and told us that Benjamin still begged my parents to reconsider. If they couldn’t come themselves, Benjamin at least wanted them to send me to America. Benjamin would take care of me, adopt and raise me.
But again my parents refused, this time due to the whitewashing that occurred in Berlin prior to the Olympics. Hitler wanted to show the world that Germany had a change of heart and no longer mistreated its Jews. It was a lie, of course, but my optimistic parents couldn’t see that. They thought things in Germany were looking up for the Jews. But soon after, things became worse than ever.
It wasn’t until after Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass (November 9–10, 1938), that my father realized Benjamin was right. But by then, Benjamin had died, and his wife wrote us a letter saying she could not fulfill the promises that Benjamin had made to us. It was too late for us: escape was no longer an option.
Down the staircase we went. We saw one of our neighbors watching us through a crack in her door, but she didn’t try to help us or say anything to us.
Apparently, the Gestapo did not fear an escape attempt, as they allowed my father to lead the way. As we descended, my mother calmed down a little. She was no longer crying, though her cheeks were still stained with streaks of tears. We were picked up by an army truck with dark khaki canvas covers. Two grim-faced SS guards, weapons at the ready, stood at the tailgate waving, motioning for us to get in the truck. When we approached, the guards took our suitcases and loaded them. They stretched their hands down to help each of us into the truck, shouting, “Hurry, we have lots of places to go.”
The truck had benches running its full length on both sides. In front of us, we saw about ten Jewish men, women, and children already sitting on the benches. We knew they were Jewish because each of them wore the Judenstern, the yellow, star-shaped badges sewn on the outer clothing of every Jew in Germany. Behind us, the tailgate was closed and the engine started. The truck began to move.
We were sitting very close to each other, huddled with our families for the small comfort that closeness could bring. Some of the people on the truck were holding hands. I stayed quiet, listening to the other people talking, my mind surprisingly clear.
The people inside the truck were asking each other, “Have you heard anything? Do you know where we’re going?” Everyone asked, but no one had any answers. The women were crying and sadness was etched into every face.
My father put his arm around my mother and the three of us sat there, asking questions and being asked. As the truck moved along, it stopped several times to pick up Jews walking along the street. Whenever the Gestapo saw someone wearing a Jewish star, they grabbed him. It was like dogcatchers catching dogs. The Jewish animals were being netted and dumped into trucks for processing.
One man tried to run. Guards ran after him, shouting, “Halt! Stop or we will shoot.” I could hear them, but I couldn’t see anything because of the truck’s fabric cover. They must have recaptured him fairly easily, because only a few minutes passed before he was back in the truck and we proceeded onward, to meet the fate that our Nazi government had decreed for its despised Jewish population.