4
Gun Factory
THE EVENTS OF THE PAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS had transformed me from a typical if slightly overprotected German Jewish teenager into a slave laborer for the Nazi regime. The emotional overload was severe enough to throw me into a state of shock. Before that day, I did not believe that there was any power on Earth strong enough or cruel enough to have so utterly destroyed my life in so short a time. I now knew better.
In the Levetzowstrasse synagogue, the policeman who had dragged me to the door consigned me to the care of another, older policeman. “Get out!” he ordered. “Tomorrow, you’ll be told where to report. Do not leave your apartment until you hear from the authorities.” He slapped a small piece of paper into my hand, which I put in my pocket, not bothering to read it.
The policeman unlocked the door and waved me out. I grabbed my little suitcase and walked out. Everywhere I looked, I saw SS troops. They were taking people from the synagogue and loading them into trucks and furniture vans. Men, women, and children of all ages, the yellow Jewish stars prominent on their clothing, were moaning and crying. I searched the crowd for my parents, hoping for a last glimpse of them, but they had vanished.
Across the street, I could see some German women standing at a distance, watching the proceedings. They made no move to help. They just stood there, watching, smiling as if this was a show staged for their amusement.
One by one, the trucks, now packed to overflowing with people, drove off. It was clear to me that they were being taken to the railroad tracks. There was only one reason why they would be going toward the tracks; they were going to be loaded into cars for deportation. I had heard rumors that Jews were secretly being loaded into cattle cars and shipped out to concentration camps. Now it seemed that the rumors were true.
The reality of the situation, the utter certainty that my parents were being sent into the East, hit me like a sledgehammer. Once gone, I would never be able to get to them. The thought flashed through my mind that I should follow the trucks and try to join my parents, but it died just as quickly. It would have been a futile act, most likely ending in a severe beating or death.
I turned and started walking, relieved to be out of the madhouse, but the events kept running through my mind, over and over. The Gestapo agent with the big, thick glasses separated me from my parents a thousand times. We were forced in opposite directions a thousand times. I felt the shock of outrage and horror a thousand times. I didn’t know if I would ever see my parents again.
After about ten foggy minutes of this, I finally reached a streetcar stop. By this time, it was around noon. The streets were busy, full of people going about their daily tasks. While waiting for the streetcar, I remembered the piece of paper I had been handed and fished it out of my pocket. It was a permission slip to be on the street and to use public transportation. Without it, I could be picked up by the Gestapo again.
The crowded streetcar pulled up in front of me. I paid the conductor and found a spot to stand on the back platform. Jews were not permitted to sit and we were only allowed to stand in certain designated areas. I grasped a ring above me and held on with one hand, putting my suitcase at my feet.
Without warning, a pack of six teenage boys barreled onto the streetcar, all dressed in black pants, brown shirts, leather shoulder straps, and black ties, reminiscent of the dress of Hitler’s original storm troopers, the SA. These were the uniforms of the Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth.
I knew a little bit about the organization. It had started as the Nazis’ answer to other youth groups of the day, notably those of the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts. They emphasized physical fitness, conformity to Nazi doctrine, and, like all other Nazi organizations, personal obedience to Adolf Hitler. Gradually, as the Nazis grew in power, the Hitler Youth absorbed other groups, until it was the largest organization of its kind in Germany. Membership became mandatory. Youth group members were educated in Nazi propaganda and underwent paramilitary training until they were totally indoctrinated with the goal of becoming the ideal Nazi.
In the early days, the Hitler Youth were given unofficial permission to harass and attack Jews, as well as serve as a kind of junior Gestapo, turning in those they found to be opposed to the regime. Gangs of Hitler Youth roamed the streets of Germany and no one, particularly Jews, was safe from threats of vandalism or bodily harm. I had had one personal encounter with them and it was not a fond memory . . .
Leslie Baruch Brent, Fred Gerstl, and Dagobert Lewin in soccer garb in the courtyard of the Judische Waisenhaus, age thirteen.
From age eleven to fourteen, I had lived in the Jüdische Waisenhaus—the Jewish Orphans’ home. Though my parents were alive, I was sent there so that I could continue my education. New laws had drastically decreased the number of Jewish children allowed to attend public school. Within a few years, the law prohibited any Jews whatsoever from going. All that remained were the few Jewish private schools, like the one in the orphans’ home.
One day, we had been playing in the courtyard when we heard a very loud noise just outside the gates separating the courtyard from the street. They saw a big crowd of young people, howling like a pack of wolves as they advanced toward us. They were Hitler Youth, outfitted in miniature uniforms and looking for all the world like smaller versions of Hitler’s SA troops. Within a few seconds, we could make out what they were screaming. They wanted to see the color of our blood.
Fear spread across the faces of our teachers.
We were ordered to go back inside to our classrooms and wait. Before we could move, the Hitler Youth had shoved themselves against the gate, battering it, trying to break it down. We went back into the school while our principal phoned the police department and told them what was happening. The police acknowledged what was occurring but said they were, unfortunately, too busy to send anyone. My friend Lothar Baruch (Leslie Baruch Brent) and I ran up to the attic of the building to hide. We were terrified.
The Hitler Youth continued their attempts to break down the gate, pounding on it and yelling threats and curses. Fortunately, they were unable to batter it down and eventually withdrew. No one from the police department ever bothered to respond.
The most horrifying part of this was that these were mere children, little older than ourselves. If they could display such savagery, what would their adult counterparts do when the opportunity presented itself?
To my regret, I was soon to learn the answer.
Finally, the streetcar pulled up to my stop. I stepped down and began the short walk to our apartment. I didn’t look at anyone. I didn’t want to see anyone.
Judische Waisenhaus, the Jewish Orphans’ home; courtyard door we used to flee the mob.
In front of me, I heard the creak of a door opening. One of our neighbors, the same one who had watched yesterday while the Gestapo took us, peered out from behind her door. I glared at her, disgusted by her and by the new Germany she seemed to represent. By now, fear of the Nazis and a desire to gain favor with them had neighbors spying on neighbors, children on their parents, and friends on friends. Any behavior that ran counter to the aims of the Nazi Party was likely to be reported and the offender denounced. Many people were eventually arrested as a result—many were executed. It was another sign of the decay that was rapidly destroying German society.
I reached the third floor and our front door. Our apartment. A lump formed in my throat as the realization that I was now on my own, alone, sank in.
I took the old-fashioned winged key and opened the door. I stood in the doorway, breathing deeply, trying to steady myself. I looked to my left, toward the kitchen. The table was set and the half-eaten pumpernickel and salami were still there, waiting for us. Waiting for the family meal that would never happen. The apartment seemed even more quiet and miserable than usual. I missed the sounds of my parents moving about.
Rear gate where the Hitler Youth attempted to break in.
A profound sadness filled me as I walked around our apartment. I put down my suitcase and went into my parents’ bedroom. I sat down on their bed, staring at the walls and trying to calm myself. For the first time in my life, I was totally alone. My mother had always taken care of everything for me. I had never made my own dinner. I had never even made a sandwich. I had never done my own shopping or washed my own laundry.
I walked over to the open armoire. As I started to close its doors, I noticed a cardboard box on one of its shelves. I sat down and dumped its contents, an assortment of old photographs, on the bed. I came across a picture of my father at his graduation from the Jewish school for the hard of hearing in Berlin-Weissensee. Both my mother and father had been sent to that school. It was there that they first met, became acquainted, fell in love, and eventually married.
Then I saw a series of pictures of my father at work. The first showed him holding a metal saw, cutting steel. After my father’s graduation, he served an apprenticeship in the trade of metalworking. He eventually succeeded in obtaining the rank of Meister (Master).
After working in an established company for a number of years, he had started his own company in the basement of an old factory building. He carried the raw material, mostly steel, down the steps himself. He then carried the finished product back up to ground level, where he sometimes put it in a pushcart and delivered it to the customer. He worked long days and often part of the night to make ends meet in the great depression that had so devastated Germany. Even with his hearing disability, he had worked himself up to a respectable level of business, with fifteen employees and a five-thousand-square-foot factory at Koepenicker Strasse 112, directly across the street from our apartment building. Eventually, he expanded even further, moving the factory to Oranienstrasse.
My father did all this, only to have the Nazi government confiscate it at the end of 1938 when they “aryanized” all Jewish businesses and properties. Jews were now prohibited from owning any business. All Jewish concerns were closed or presented to a non-Jew. My father’s business was literally given away, to a man of no special accomplishments or achievement. He was, however, a longtime Nazi Party member.
My father received no recompense for his business. Instead, he was forced to work at a Siemens cable plant, where he was given the post of cable machine operator. It was a repetitive job, requiring no brains. It was a tremendous letdown for my father, who was a man of great intellect, ability, and initiative. It gave me another reason to hate the Nazis, as though I needed more.
I came across a picture of myself as a six-year-old boy in knickers, posing with a big paper cone—a zuckerhut. It was customary that on a child’s first day of school, his parents would give him a zuckerhut full of chocolates and other candy. Then they would have a portrait made of the child posing with the zuckerhut. The wish was that the little child’s life and schooling would be full of sweetness and joy, just like the candy. A wave of sadness swept over me. My life after that day had been anything but sweet.
I put the picture box away and walked out of my parents’ room and down the hall into my bedroom, thinking about my old life.
Bert Lewyn with zuckerhut, age six.
Each evening after public school, I did my homework at the kitchen table while my mother made dinner. On a typical night, my father would arrive from work, newspaper in hand. He’d come in and wash and we’d immediately sit down for dinner.
Afterward, my father and I would come into the dining room while my mother washed the dishes. My father would always get the newspaper. He would spread it out and silently read it from beginning to end. Whenever he came to an article or passage that seemed to concern him, he would read it out loud to me.
When I was nine years old, Hitler was about to come into power. Hindenburg was the president of Germany at the time. Hindenburg was quite old, a war hero extremely well known to all Germans. Some said he was a little feeble. Hitler was working furiously behind the scenes to force Hindenburg to step aside and to have himself appointed to take Hindenburg’s place. Hitler made adroit use of his Sturmabteilung (storm troopers) in terrorizing and killing his political opponents. On this night, I watched my father’s face as he read the paper. The smile that usually decorated his face slowly changed into a scowl.
“Johanna!” he called, as my mother came into the room with some tea. “Listen to this! Look at this rascal Hitler! It appears he may make it to the position of Reichskanzler. But his methods are verrückt [insane]. He’s crazy! I cannot believe that he will actually become the Reichskanzler. This does not bode well for Germany, and there’s no way to predict what will happen to us.”
I was amazed at my father’s dismay. He never displayed his emotions this way. Something powerful had to occur for him to do this, and it certainly didn’t happen very often. My mother sat down at the table. “What’s going to happen? What’s going to become of us?” Of course, if we had known the answer at that time, we would have left Berlin if we had to walk out.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the front door. I hesitated. The last time I’d opened the door for an unexpected visitor, the Gestapo had barged in.
“Who is it?” I yelled through the door.
It was a messenger from the Gestapo. He handed me an envelope. Inside was a tan-colored card. On it was typed:
Message: To Dagobert Lewin. You’re herewith ordered to report to the Gustav Genschow Waffenfabrik, Address Bouchéstrasse 12, Berlin-Treptow at 7am tomorrow.
After confirming that I understood the instructions, the messenger departed.
Waffenfabrik—a weapons factory. I started seeing new meaning in some of the questions the Gestapo had asked me. Weapons were made of steel. The Gestapo knew I had apprenticed in metalworking. Now it was all very clear. That’s why they separated me from my parents. They wanted to utilize my training and experience in metalworking in their weapons factory. And I had no choice except to obey.
The next day, I headed for the factory. The Gustav Genschow Waffenfabrik was in the Berlin Treptow neighborhood on a road that held a combination of industrial and residential buildings. As I neared the factory building, I resigned myself to working for the Nazis. The only alternative was to await arrest and deportation, and this was not a choice that appealed to me.
G. Genschow & Co., Weapons Factory Berlin-Treptow, Bouchéstrasse 12.
Arriving on time, I walked up to the gate. A guard was sitting in a guardhouse. As I approached, he asked for my papers. He notified someone inside the factory and told me to wait until they came for me. Then he returned his attention to the entrance gate.
I stood there, watching and waiting. After a few minutes, an older man wearing a white shop coat approached. Once again, my papers were checked and my identity confirmed. He ushered me inside the building, where I was interviewed and my picture was taken. I was escorted to the production area to meet the floor supervisor.
A minute or two later, he reappeared with one of the strangest-looking men I’d ever seen. His name was Herr Giertz, and he was a hunchback. He was very short, probably about five foot six, and in spite of the fact that his body was hunched over, he held his head in a very erect position, almost like a dinosaur. He was older, close to seventy, and wore a pair of very thick glasses. He examined me for a minute, peering over the rims of the glasses as he looked me up and down. He dismissed my escort and proceeded to interview me, extracting information about my training and background. “What can you do?” he asked me. “I have had some information about you, but I want you to tell me about your experience and knowledge yourself.” He was quite stern and stuck to the facts without much social chitchat. This was not a man overly concerned with being diplomatic.
I went over my background in some detail, telling him about the three-and-one-half-year apprenticeship in machine building that I had served. Giertz was surprised to hear that there were Jews who worked with their hands, but I assured him that I was only one of many. Nazi propaganda made almost all Jews out to be doctors, lawyers, or merchants.
“Come with me,” Herr Giertz said. “I will take you around the floor and show you our machinery.” He proceeded to walk with me through the rows of machines.
Most of them were in operation. As I looked at the workers, men of various ages, some of them seemed very obviously out of place. A few of them had no idea what they were doing. They moved awkwardly, hesitating as they moved the levers and wheels. There was a bald, heavyset man using his left hand to advance a tool when he was obviously right-handed. They all looked frustrated and unhappy.
After having made the rounds on the floor, Herr Giertz took me back to his little booth. “I’m going to use you as a setup man,” he said. A setup man was one who set up the machine in order to allow it to produce a particular part.
“Can you handle the job?” he asked?
Choking back a bitter reply, I said, “I can and I will.”
He didn’t smile. In fact, I never remember seeing him smile in the entire time I worked at the factory.
“Since you’re a Jew, maybe you can get along with your fellow Jews,” he said.
Ah, so most of the machine workers are Jews, I thought. I hadn’t known that before. Now it was clear why these men seemed so incompetent and unhappy. I thought it was rather odd that I, being just nineteen with no real life experience, would be instructing and helping men twice and three times my age. As I would soon learn, these men were professionals or intellectuals in other fields. They had all been conscripted as slave labor for the Nazi war effort. Some of them were “allowed” to work there because they had a non-Jewish wife, or because they were of mixed Jewish and Gentile parentage. The majority of them had been separated from their families, just as I had been the day before. There were also Gentiles from other countries working there, forced laborers from Denmark, France, Holland, and Belgium. The few Germans who worked there were almost all in supervisory positions.
I began work that same day and continued six days a week thereafter. What I did was simple. The machines on our floor produced mainly machine gun barrels. To be accurate, the gun barrels had to be made to extremely close tolerances. As little as a few thousandths of a millimeter could cause the gun to fire incorrectly. If the machines were not set up properly, the barrels would be too large or too small. It was my job to make sure the machines produced the barrels perfectly. If they didn’t, I and the workers in my department would be reprimanded—or worse.
One day, a few months after I started working in the gun factory, two young, grim-looking SS officers appeared in our department. Outfitted in jackboots and the typical black SS uniforms, they immediately went to the back where the top man, Herr Becker, had an office. No one knew what they were doing at the factory, but we were all sure that it meant trouble.
After a few minutes, they emerged with a prisoner. It was Harry Keil. He was handcuffed and looked pale and nervous. Harry was known to be something of a smart aleck, constantly talking back to the supervisors and making sarcastic comments. His mouth had gotten him in trouble before, but his non-Jewish mother had somehow been able to intervene. The rumor was that she had some sort of influence with Eichmann himself and had been able to get him released from jail in the past. Whether she could help him again remained to be seen. Regardless of the outcome, it did drive home the precariousness of our positions. Any of us could be taken away by the SS at the whim of our supervisors.
A few of our bosses were easy to get along with, but most of them saw us as members of an inferior race, not actual human beings. Paul Giertz, my grouchy, hunchback lizard of a supervisor, made complaints all day, every day. According to him, he never made an error. I agreed with him and told him many times that he was something akin to Superman and this always seemed to mollify him. This was my first experience in having to play up to someone, and I was quickly learning that truth did not always equate with survival, at least not in the Third Reich.
During our lunch break, all the Jews sat together on wooden benches at long tables. Everyone had to bring their own lunch. I usually made a sandwich with a slice of cheese and so-called bread. Many referred to these war loaves as “sawmill” breads because of the real or imagined content of sawdust in them.
It was very difficult to get even bread and cheese. Jews were allowed only small quantities of food, about half the rations of non-Jews. Another problem was simply getting to the store. By law, Jews were only permitted to shop during certain hours. My work schedule frequently conflicted with the allowed shopping schedule, and on these days I had to go without. I was hungry all the time; I never felt full. And it wasn’t just the food rations that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. Our pay was less than half of what non-Jews got.
The vast majority of people at the factory were middle-aged or older, but there were a few people working there who were about my age. Among them were two Jewish brothers, Horst and Heinz Lebrecht. Both became machine operators, and I was their setup man. Like the other workers, they looked to me for assistance. I became friendly with them, sitting together at lunch, telling stories.
One day, Horst and Heinz invited me to come visit their parents, Jenny and Leo Lebrecht. On the way to their apartment, they told me an extraordinary story about their parents.
For years, the Lebrecht family had been very friendly with the Keil family. Harry Keil was the young man who had been arrested by the SS at the gun factory where we worked. His mother, a Catholic, had been able to pull strings to get him released, not once, but twice.
But Mrs. Keil also had other strings she was able to pull, this time for the Lebrecht family. Mrs. Keil had another friend, a Mrs. Letts, whose husband had been killed when Germany invaded Russia in the early years of the war. Mrs. Letts had a little boy, only five years old. After Mr. Letts died, the boy was evacuated, along with hundreds of other Gentile children, to a small town in the country. Berlin had become a hazardous place for children due to frequent nocturnal bombing raids by the Royal Air Force.
Mrs. Letts worked as a maid in the Nazi Party district office at 3 Lorenzestrasse in Berlin-Lichterfelde. In addition to a salary, her Nazi bosses gave Mrs. Letts the free use of an apartment in the basement of their office building. All this suited Mrs. Letts, until she decided she desperately missed her boy and wanted to go visit him. Her Nazi bosses told her she could not take a leave of absence unless she found a qualified replacement.
Upon hearing this, Mrs. Keil came up with a plan. Jenny Lebrecht would take Mrs. Letts’s place as the maid for the Nazi offices. Jenny (and secretly, her husband, Leo) would live in Mrs. Letts’s apartment. In exchange, Jenny would forward the salary she made to Mrs. Letts, who would remain with her little son in the country.
As it turned out, Jenny Lebrecht did such an extraordinary job that her Nazi bosses considered her indispensable and never asked again about Mrs. Letts. And so it was that Jewish Jenny Lebrecht (with fake identification papers) lived and worked in the Nazi district office. Leo hid in the basement apartment. It was a perfect setup for them. It also had the added benefit of shielding both of them from the Gestapo. The Gestapo was less likely to look in the basement of their own district headquarters for hidden Jews. Horst and Heinz had their own room rented in another apartment.
My visit with Jenny and Leo Lebrecht was brief but enjoyable. And ultimately, these Lebrecht brothers would save my life, and I theirs.
Four weeks after my parents were taken from me, I finally heard from them. I had just gotten home from work when I discovered a picture postcard, with an illustration of trees and flowers, in the mailbox. I ran my thumb over the picture, caressing it. I turned it over. The writing was unmistakably my father’s.
“We have arrived at Trawniki, near Lublin. We are fine and are doing well. Greetings and kisses from your parents.”
That was it. Nothing else.
I read it over and over and over. I was elated to get it and excited to hear from my parents. After a few minutes, though, I sat down on the couch in our living room and thought about it. I realized the postcard had been doctored. The surface message of the card could not be true. My parents weren’t really “fine.” They did not write this of their own free will. If they had, they would have said more, much more. They would have used the opportunity to let me know that they had not been harmed. Therefore, they had either been forced to write the postcard, or it was an outright forgery. Either way, someone wanted me to believe that they were in good shape.
Much later, I found out this was a common Gestapo tactic, designed to reassure anxious relatives at home and defuse rebellious thoughts brought on by worry about loved ones. The postcards also helped Jews destined for deportation get into the boxcars that would ultimately lead to their deaths without objection or resistance, since those who had gone before seemed to be doing well.
I learned that many people had received these cryptic “we’re OK” cards. It was just one of hundreds of lies the Gestapo used to lure Jews to their deaths with a minimum of fuss.
I never again received anything from my parents.