SHORTLY AFTER RECEIVING THE POSTCARD FROM MY PARENTS, I found myself remembering the woman who had sat with us at the Levetzowstrasse synagogue, Fraulein Minna Schlesinger. I wondered if she was with my parents. Perhaps her family had heard from her. And, though I knew it was preposterous to tease myself with the hope, if my parents had succeeded in helping her perhaps she would have mentioned them in a letter to her sister.
I decided to visit the Schlesingers’ home at 5 Wielandstrasse in Berlin-Friedenau. I took the subway from my neighborhood of Berlin-Mitte to Friedenau. Friedenau was a lovely, upper middle-class neighborhood with many grand old apartment buildings. Arriving at #5, I rang the bell.
After a minute, I heard an older woman’s voice come over the loudspeaker. It was Selma Schlesinger, Minna’s sister. I introduced myself and told her that I had met Minna at the Levetzowstrasse synagogue. Almost immediately, the door to the apartment flew open and Selma literally dragged me inside. She was frantic, almost in tears at the thought of getting news about Minna. She insisted that I tell her everything.
It was my unpleasant duty to tell Selma how her sister had been arrested by the Gestapo. As much as I would have liked to soften the blow, I felt I had to tell Selma that Minna had almost certainly been deported along with my parents. Selma took the news with a grace and strength that I would not have imagined she possessed. She told me that she felt certain that something bad had happened when Minna had not arrived home. Nothing had been heard from Minna for weeks.
Selma asked me if I had heard from my parents and I told her about the postcard I’d received and my suspicion that it was fraudulent.
“Do you have any other family in Germany?” she asked.
“No, I do not, Fraulein Schlesinger,” I replied.
“You are all alone?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I replied.
“So sad. And you are so young.” She paused, looking at me with a speculative air. “Please, you must stay for dinner. It won’t be much, of course, given the rationing, but at least we can continue our conversation.” Never one to turn down a meal, I accepted. We spent a pleasant hour eating and discussing what was happening to the world we had known.
As I bid her good night, she asked me to stop by from time to time to visit. I had no difficulty promising to do so. At this juncture, life seemed very difficult and I would be glad of her company in the little leisure time the Nazis allowed me. I had been working ten-hour shifts, six days a week in the gun factory, never knowing when they would suddenly change my shift schedule. I was being ground down by the cycle of work, eat, sleep, and work again. I was miserable, without friends or family, lacking all of those things that make life something more than a burden to be borne.
And so I decided to contact Dr. Finger.
Dr. Finger was a dentist whom my parents and I had seen over the years and with whom we had become very friendly. He was highly respected by his patients, two of whom were German businessmen with influence that reached high into the upper strata of the Reich. He was fortunate in that these men were able to pull strings to protect him and his wife. For now at least, he was able to continue living in his apartment. Hungry for the sight of a friendly face, I went to visit him at his apartment. He was always glad to see me, and I made it a point to visit him regularly.
One day I arrived for a visit. Dr. Finger seemed nervous, pacing back and forth across the floor as if he were being chased by some private demon. I asked him what was wrong and his reply was one I had heard all too often recently.
“Dagobert, it looks as though the Gestapo is closing in on me. I have reason to believe that they will soon deport me and my wife.” In those days, few people understood exactly what deportation meant. At best, it was a complete and total disruption of one’s life as that person was shipped off to a different area of Europe. But there were rumors of a more horrific meaning to the word, a meaning inevitably defined by the death of the person selected. In the days to come, we were all fated to learn that deportation was just another word for death.
My heart sank. The Gestapo was becoming ever more efficient at deporting Jews. Fewer and fewer Jews remained in Berlin. Although I did not know it at the time, Berlin’s Jewish population had by now been reduced to about one-quarter of its prewar size. And this number would have been even smaller had the Wehrmacht not insisted that Jews such as myself, who worked in areas vital to the war effort, be left alone until replacements could be found.
“However,” I heard him continue, “some patients of mine, a Christian family, have offered to take us in. Within the next few days, we are going into hiding.” I must have looked a little stunned, because Dr. Finger looked at me and reached out to put his hand on my shoulder. “Dagobert, do not fear. We will still be able to stay in touch.”
Stay in touch? Was he crazy? He would be in hiding! “How on Earth can we do that, Dr. Finger?” I asked him.
Gentle old Dr. Finger was probably the last man on Earth I would have ever thought of as being knowledgeable about espionage. Regardless of how he had learned the techniques, he was able to show me an exact method that I could use to contact him without danger for either of us.
This method used the general delivery system provided by the post office. The heart of the system was a fraudulent postal ID card, which identified Dr. Finger as one “J. Streich.” I was to write a postcard addressed to J. Streich, care of General Delivery. I would then mail it to the postmaster at the district post office. The postmaster would file the card in alphabetical order under S. Dr. Finger would come in to check his mail on a regular basis, present his ID, and retrieve any mail that was waiting.
“That sounds good,” I said. “And you will write to me under my real name?”
“No,” Dr. Finger replied, “I think it best that we get you your own ID. That way, should anything happen, we will still be able to correspond.”
I looked at him, perplexed. Anything happen? I was nineteen, unable to conceive of anything else happening more terrible than those events that had already befallen me. I was still getting used to life without my parents and working at the gun factory. With the insane optimism of youth, I thought that surely nothing else could happen to harm me, that I had reached the bottom of the barrel and I had no where to go but up. In this I was horribly wrong, but it would be some time before I would realize it.
Dr. Finger saw that I was concerned. “Just do as I say,” he said. “I’d rather get you an ID while I can, just in case.
“So, he continued, “on your cards or letters to me, you must tell me when you want to meet me.”
“OK,” I began, but Dr. Finger quickly interrupted.
“I think, Dagobert, that we should use some type of code to determine when and where we meet. It may not be safe to put much in writing.” Once again, Dr. Finger advised me on how to set up a meeting safely. He instructed me to always meet him at Aschingers Restaurant. This would make it unnecessary to ever write down the name of a meeting place. I was told to write Thursday if I wished to meet him on Wednesday, or Sunday if I wanted to meet on Saturday. The time for the meeting was handled in the same way. If I wanted to see him at four o’clock, I was to write six in the message.
“All you have to do is to write me using my alias and a meeting will be arranged. You must be patient, Dagobert. I probably won’t be able to retrieve my mail more than once a week. So don’t expect instant results, but at least we will be able to meet safely.”
My education in the world of the underground had begun. I dropped my letters to “J. Streich,” and picked up mail under my new name of “D. Leo.” We met from time to time. More important, I had been introduced to methods that made living outside of Nazi rule possible.
I continued to grow closer to the Lebrecht brothers, talking to them during work and at lunch. We had much in common. Heinz was my age, and Horst was about two years older. One thing I particularly liked about them was that both were even-tempered, patient men. They were supremely patient in everything they did. This was important to me, because hasty people inevitably made mistakes and I was already beginning to think about the Lebrechts as potential partners. Dealing with the Nazis left no margin for error; any mistake could prove fatal, so being patient and methodical were vital to the survival of all of us.
We spent a good deal of time talking about current conditions in Nazi-dominated Berlin, particularly the food situation. All food and most other consumer goods were subject to rationing and were only available with coupons. Jews received roughly half what Gentiles were allowed. Being nineteen years old with a high metabolism, I was starting to get a little desperate over the food situation. While I wasn’t actually starving, I seemed to be hungry all the time. I knew that, in the long run, I would eventually become malnourished on the rations I was allowed.
Even at that time, there was a black market for almost everything, including food and ration cards for food. I was slowly becoming educated in underground survival techniques. But to get anything, legitimate or not, one thing was essential: money. Since we could come up with no legitimate way to obtain more food or money, we concluded that we would have to resort to an illegitimate method.
I had never before even vaguely considered committing any kind of criminal act. I was a straitlaced child and my father was rigorously honest, so even thinking about it was difficult. But by now, I was motivated to do something. The Nazis had stolen my family from me, made me a slave, deported my fellow Jews, and were slowly starving me to death. I wanted to do something to strike back, to sabotage their efforts to make slaves of other men.
With these thoughts in mind, we weighed a number of alternatives. We decided to try to dismantle and sell components from some of the machines in the gun factory. Some of these machines were in storage and the parts would, most likely, never be missed. With the money we made, we would be able to buy additional ration cards on the black market.
The plan had the added appeal that we would be damaging the war effort. The machines would be disabled, useless without parts that would be difficult to replace in wartime. Not sabotage on a grand scale perhaps, but nevertheless acts that would damage the Nazi war machine. The downside of the plan was that, if we were caught, we could expect deportation and, very possibly, execution. I refrained from inquiring as to the exact penalties involved.
We decided to do it. Since none of us had any prior experience or qualifications as a thief, we spent quite a lot of time planning our crime. We’d remove motors from machines that were not in use. As it happened, there was no more suitable target for our efforts. The Gustav Genschow Waffenfabrik was owned by IG Farben, a huge worldwide conglomerate. IG Farben had its fingers in many business pies. Although I was unaware of it at the time, IG Farben also made Zyklon B gas for the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
We were well aware that, if caught, our punishment would be swift and harsh. The Nazis were already using every possible excuse to arrest and deport innocent Jews. I could only imagine what they would do if they got their hands on an actual Jewish criminal. Some of the methods of execution they were employing included hanging by a rope, being impaled on meat hooks, and guillotining. If the Gestapo were involved, the method of death would be irrelevant. Whatever way the end came, it would be certain to be welcomed after experiencing the tender mercies of the Gestapo torture squads.
There was the problem of how to dispose of the motors. Electric motors, like many other goods, were strictly rationed at this point in the war. The motors contained a large amount of copper wire, which was an imported item and difficult to obtain in wartime. I knew that there was a high demand for used motors of virtually any kind. The military had first priority when it came to any type of goods or service, and the civilian population had to make do with what was left.
Because my father had purchased motors from time to time, I was familiar with several small shops that were in the business of repairing and rebuilding them. I started with a shop owned and run by two older men, brothers, who had done business with my father and had eventually become quite friendly with him.
I walked up to the shop, opened the door, and walked in. A secretary was seated at a desk that was dusty enough to match the rest of the office. Under a layer of dirt, which seemed to coat the entire building, motors and switching gears were scattered all around. I walked up to the secretary, but before I got a good look at her, the odor of her perfume hit me like a sledgehammer. She smelled as though she had bathed in a huge vat of the stuff. I coughed as I tried to breathe through it.
“Got a cold, honey?” she asked, looking at me over thick, horn-rimmed glasses. She had a telephone to her ear and was speaking into it in a rather odd, broken tone of voice. I quickly realized this was due to the bits of candy residing in her mouth that she chewed in a circular manner, using her tongue to rotate the pieces like a juggler throwing his balls.
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I wasn’t used to having a stranger speak nicely to me. Knowing that it was absolutely illegal to do business with Jews, I had purposely put on an old jacket of my father’s, one that my mother had never sewn a yellow star onto.
“What do you need, honey?”
“I need to speak to the owners of the shop.”
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Dagobert Lewin. I’m Leopold Lewin’s son.”
“OK, wait here,” she said.
She rose and walked out the door behind her, into the shop. Her moving set in motion a whole new slew of perfume molecules, which promptly came hurtling my way, triggering another coughing attack. After I caught my breath, I was grateful to see one of the brothers emerge without the secretary. He seemed older than I remembered and a bit feeble.
“Hello, young Herr Lewin. What brings you here?” he asked.
After a little small talk, I felt him out on whether he would be interested in the motors. He let me know right away that he could use them and asked me to come back when I had some to sell. Nothing was said about where the motors would come from. Perhaps he felt the less he knew the better. Whatever the reason, it seemed that I would have no trouble disposing of them. I thanked him for his time and left.
I was glad that he hadn’t asked for details. I didn’t want to tell him anything, and I now felt sure he didn’t want to know. Soon, I would bring him one of the motors and see what he would pay. The next night, the Lebrechts and I went about the business of becoming thieves.
I was working the day shift, and they were working at night. During the night shift, there was only a minimum of supervision. There were hardly any Germans there, and the Nazis would trust no one else as supervisors. The Lebrechts were free to work the inside of the building. It was left up to me to work the outside. Sometime during their shift, the brothers disconnected a motor, took it off the machine, and placed it on the floor.
The next night, I arranged my departure so I would arrive at the factory after dark. We had very little time, since the streetcars stopped running at 10:00 PM and I had to be on my way home before then. I got off the streetcar and walked toward the gun factory. An armed guard behind a barbed wire fence controlled access to the main entrance on Bouchéstrasse, but the fence did not completely encircle the building. We planned on using a side of the building that had windows but no doors. This would minimize the likelihood of our work being interrupted. There was almost no traffic on Bouchéstrasse at night, so there was little chance that anyone on the street would see us.
Instead of approaching by way of the main entrance, I stayed on a grass strip that ran under the window we had chosen as the drop-off point. At the appointed time, Horst’s head appeared outside the window, gazing down at me. He slung a rope securely around the motor and lowered it carefully until it was far enough down for me to grasp. I signaled to him that I had it, slipped the motor into a rucksack, and was on my way within minutes. No one had interfered or even seemed to notice.
I walked to the streetcar stop. When the streetcar came, I got on, entered the platform, and let the pack rest on the ledge in back of me. As soon as I got to my apartment, I hauled the motor upstairs. Very early the next morning, I took it to the shop.
All had gone well. The shop owners were as good as their word and paid on delivery. The Lebrechts and I divided the money in two parts, half for me and half for them. I was taking the greater risk and did most of the work, so they agreed that this was a fair division of the spoils. We repeated this scenario at least ten times over the next few months. It was only possible while the Lebrechts were on one shift and I was on the other. Every so often our shifts would change, and in those periods our crime spree came to a halt. But the administrators never seemed to notice that the motors were gone, and there was never any hint of repercussions.
Because of the chronic shortage of manufactured goods, the value of the motors was much greater than it would have been in normal times. For the night’s labor, we received enough cash to keep us all in food for approximately a month. And we deprived our enemy, in a small way, perhaps, of tools he needed to make his weaponry. Even more important, I had become familiar with another way of surviving in what had become a brutal world.