Escape to Virginia

After Bondy’s “greeting,” Töpper entered the hall, which opened into a large room. He was astonished by the high ceilings, the dark woodwork and the huge windows. He knew that Gross Breesen was large, but this surpassed all expectations. The manor house was, indeed, a schloss. Bondy instructed Töpper to select a mattress from a room used for storage and to place it on the floor in a dormitory. Bunk beds would not arrive until later in the summer. Sleeping on the floor and living out of a suitcase were only temporary, but they provided a reality check. The Spartan conditions reminded the students of why they came to Gross Breesen in the first place: they had to learn to be farmers, which hopefully would lead to their escape from Germany.

The manor house had to be readied as quickly as possible for the students who were arriving every day. Töpper was introduced to Master Carpenter Max Kiwi and his son, Hermann, who were magicians with wood, and under their instruction, the students would become apprentices as they learned construction and woodworking skills on the job. As it was, students learned by doing. They built cabinets, bookcases, tables and stools; refurbished floors and doors; caulked windows; plastered cracks; and painted walls. Sanding, scraping, sawing, hammering, raking, pruning—all were done by hand and took time. The students grew to appreciate the relationship between an object’s function and its form. When a project was completed, there was no better feeling of accomplishment for these urban teenagers who had no prior experience of working with their hands. Töpper learned quickly, and he shared in the spirit of teamwork and the joy of doing real work for a real goal. The depression he had experienced at home vanished.

A visitor to the farm noted in a letter he wrote about his impressions of Gross Breesen: “It is gratifying to see how unspoiled and how unsophisticated these boys are. Almost all of the provinces of Germany are represented here; at the table one hears the most varied dialects. The tone is disciplined, but happy and boyish.”¹²

New students arrived daily, and those who had been on the farm for a while showed the rookies, called “Ottos,” the ropes mixed with some hazing fun.¹³

The Schloss provided the needed space. In the basement, there was a large kitchen, utility rooms, a shower and a laundry room. On the first floor, there were two dining halls, two classrooms, a girls’ dormitory and a “silent room” that would serve as a library and a sanctuary for worship. By summer’s end, dormitory rooms for boys and girls each held six to twelve students, metal wardrobes, a work table and bunk beds. Bondy’s corner suite contained a study and a bedroom, and it had two large windows through which he could observe almost every activity on the farm. The first time Töpper walked past Bondy’s room, he did a double-take. Outside his door, there were three traffic lights. Bondy explained the procedure. If the red light was lit, no one should even dare to ring his doorbell. If the orange light was on, that meant that one could enter, but it had better be for a crucial reason. The green light indicated that one could ring the bell and be invited into the room to talk with Herr Bondy. The traffic light system worked very well because there was never any confusion. It protected Bondy’s privacy and gave clear guidelines for the students.¹⁴ By midsummer, showers had been installed, replacing those bucket baths Töpper had endured, but only cold showers were allowed, except for a once-a-week hot shower before the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday nights. In truth, the students probably never stayed under the cold water long enough to get clean.

By the beginning of August, about fifty boys and girls were already living and working at Gross Breesen. They quickly realized that they were the eclectic few. They adapted to the daily structured routine that started by waking at 5:00 a.m. After a cold shower, breakfast was served at 5:45 a.m. It consisted of hot cereal and a mug of barley coffee, certainly not found in the trendy coffee shops of Berlin. After breakfast, there were classes in agricultural theory taught by Mr. Scheier that consisted of animal husbandry, crop rotation, the use of fertilizers and manure and the different growing cycles of cereals, fruits, grasses and vegetables.¹⁵ Scheier strove to go beyond the basics. He wanted the students to acquire a feel for the wonders of nature and farming. He taught his students to distinguish rye from barley, winter wheat from summer wheat, sugar beets from turnips. He demonstrated how to use a hay fork efficiently, how to fluff up the hay to aerate it and how to load it onto a wagon. There were lessons on how to hoe and weed a garden.

Mrs. Scheier taught the girls. As the boys learned how to farm outside, the girls learned how to keep the farm running from the inside. They learned skills related to the laundry, mending clothing, bread baking, cooking and house cleaning. Preparing meals for such large groups and utilizing gigantic pots and stoves demanded a new sense of kitchen management and meal planning. Each meal became a logistical challenge. In addition to all the activities related to keeping the manor house functioning, the girls learned about light truck farming, and some girls volunteered to learn dairying. Every one of these skills would become the backbone of any farming success in the future.

After early morning classes, at 7:50 a.m. the boys and girls lined up outside in formation. There were two lines, with the tallest on the right and the shorter ones on the left. The girls stood in the second row to the far left, not so subtly indicating their status. This was the German way, and even though Gross Breesen was a school for Jews, the old-world, German culture pervaded everything. The girls accepted their roles, but they knew that they were respected and highly regarded. Being outnumbered three to one, however, had its benefits. What teenage girl would not like the odds? The students stood at attention and were inspected by Dr. Bondy. He had been a sergeant in the German army in World War I, and his military discipline lurked deep in his bones. After the roll call of the students, Mr. Scheier, as the manager of the farm, barked out the assignments for the day and designated the workstations.¹⁶

Images

At the morning roll call, students received their work assignments at Gross Breesen, 1936. Courtesy of the Circular Letters.

The first real agricultural activity of the neophyte farmers was the harvesting of the early summer hay crop. Accomplishing as many cuttings in a growing season was crucial to ensure an ample supply of hay for the dairy cows over the winter. The initial instruction by Scheier and the other assistant instructors was now tested in the field, and what seemed easy in the classroom proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Dressed in denim overalls and brown Wellington leather boots, the boys soon realized that it took practice to master the skills of using a scythe and sickle and regularly sharpening their blades with a stone. Teenage boys are impatient. They believe that brawn can outsmart technique. Their mindset: the harder and faster one works, the better. Not so. Technique always wins out in the end. Only experience can teach this important lesson, and the boys learned it the hard way. Haying was dirty and sweaty work as their long-handled pitchforks lifted, turned and bundled the cut grass before it was flung onto the hay wagons. The exhausted boys suffered from aching muscles and blistered hands; work gloves were not allowed in summer or winter. But they did learn, and they became experts.¹⁷

Around 10:00 a.m., there was a work break, a “second breakfast” of barley coffee and rye bread and jam, which the girls lugged out in large baskets and covered containers.¹⁸ This was a time of kidding and flirting. Then it was back to work. The hay wagons were pulled by horses to the barns where they were unloaded. Storing the hay in the lofts was dangerous business. Pitchforks flayed, and no one could really see clearly in the swirling fog of hay dust. Töpper recalled later, “We were constantly in danger of stabbing each other with the pitchforks. Nonetheless, this experience developed in us a spirit of belonging and the will to do good work.”¹⁹ It was a wonder that no one was impaled by a fork. After the last wagon was unloaded, the boys exploded with the exuberance of experiencing the accomplishment of teamwork. Together, they had completed a man’s job, and they had done it well, even though it probably took twice as long. This set the tone and attitude for the years to come.

The spirit pervading the whole life here and which already now, after such a short time, is characteristic of Gross Breesen, cannot be described in a few sentences…everybody realized that it was actually “our” hay, “our” harvest, for which we toiled…I consider this attitude to the work of the people here to be something decisively important…One other thing stands out here, seemingly on a superficiality: The order in life here and the attitude [emphasis in original] of the people. One has come used to hold punctuality and discipline as self-evident very quickly… Overall, the people here learn to have themselves in their own control—and for later that is of great significance.²⁰

The lunchtime siren could not come soon enough. The boys walked to the main house for lunch and sat at the long benches on stools they had made. There were no backs to ease their back strain, and if one slouched, he was reminded to sit up straight. Each table was composed of a dormitory’s members, and each competed with strange cheers and antics before the meal. Following lunch, there was a one-hour rest period when the students retreated to their rooms. This was a time of total silence, strictly enforced. No one balked at this daily ritual that often included a short nap, a delicious luxury in a day of extreme physical exertion.

During this cessation from work, the entire community took in a deep breath together, held it and exhaled in relaxed relief. One could almost hear the castle breathing a giant breath. This was when Töpper thought of how his life had changed. When he left high school, he felt bored, cut off from many of his friends and with no sense of where he was going. He craved meaningful goals, something to hold onto. He remembered the nightmares that had plagued him. Here, at Gross Breesen, his uncertainties were quieted, at least for the present. Better than the weekend outings and meetings of the Bund, now he was with his friends every day, all day and night. When he closed his eyes, his mind flashed pictures of his breaking up clumps of moist soil with his hands. In Berlin, he never planted anything and hardly noticed the change of seasons. He never wondered if there would be enough rain or too much. He never learned to observe nature’s clock. Now, even though he could not explain it, he felt humbled and hopeful. Crops would spring from seeds, and he knew he had something to do with it. This was a new kind of living, and it felt good. But, no matter, looming in the distance over Gross Breesen was the dark cloud of Nazi Germany. Gross Breesen was a reprieve, and the students knew they had to emigrate.

Like everyone else, Curt Bondy rested after lunch. His attention never strayed from the welfare of his students and the prospects of escaping Nazi Germany. The responsibility and promises he had made to the parents to keep their children safe weighed on his mind.

Each day, completed farm chores added up. Just as an athlete trains over a period of time and builds up individual strength, so the students’ skills, achievements and pride in their work accumulated. The autumn harvest seemed endless. First, the grains had to be harvested and stored. Next, potatoes, beets and turnips needed to be unearthed, picked up and stored before the first killer frost. That required hours of bending over with hoes and placing the vegetables, one at a time, into metal mesh baskets that resembled woven wicker. The boys and girls worked no matter what the weather. As autumn moved into early winter, the wind and rain chilled them to the bone. Nothing could block the wind in the open fields, and their cold bare hands turned red and became chapped. The days were long and the work was demanding, and there always was a time factor: crops had to be harvested quickly or they would be ruined. This pressure motivated the students and heightened their commitment. “When the last load was brought in, the event was accompanied by shouting, singing, and a general feeling of accomplishment.”²¹ The ingathering of crops, however, was not the end of working in the fields before winter set in. The students formed a long line at one end of a field to the other and proceeded to move together as they picked up stones and deposited them into metal baskets. From a distance, one could imagine the long line to be the phalanx of an advancing Roman army. They were already planning the spring planting, and removing stones would make that easier.

Only two assignments broke with the daily schedule. Those assigned to the dairy rotation woke up at 4:00 a.m., and those priming the Lanz Bulldog tractor woke at 3:30 a.m.

Dairy duty for “cowboys,” and some “cowgirls,” who volunteered was the smelliest, dirtiest job on the farm. It lasted for six weeks. During that time, everyone knew who was working in the dairy, for no matter how one scrubbed in the shower, the stench of cow dung permeated clothing, skin and hair. In fact, the dairy workers were not allowed to sit next to the others during meals. Even though the students tried to clean them, the cows lived in filth. They slept on straw that was full of dung. Every day, the students brushed and cleaned the eighty cows, but it was a futile job. Everything stunk. Even the udder cleansing solution, made from the residue of potato alcohol, smelled horribly.

The students soon realized that milking each cow by hand was an art, and it required practice and a bit of courage. Töpper was assigned to dairy duty, but his six cows distrusted him from the very beginning. They probably sensed his own hesitancy. Often, he fell off the low, three-legged stool, and one day, just when he had filled a bucket with warm milk, the cow kicked it over, seemingly just to harass him. When this happened, the metal bucket clanged like a bell as it flew against the stall, and the ober—the Aryan dairy manager who really thought that Töpper was “useless”—came running and screaming. Töpper failed milking class, and the ober kicked him out of the barn after an argument. Bondy was none too happy with Töpper, but the cows probably sighed with relief.²²

The second most difficult duty was preparing the Lanz Bulldog tractor for the day’s work. It was a scary job, for the tractor loomed as more than just a machine. After its fuel was heated by a blowtorch, it mutated into a dragon that disgorged black puffs of smoke from its smokestack and roared in staccato blasts when its engine tried to ignite. The tractor was used for all sorts of chores on the farm, but the most dramatic one was when a long leather belt was connected from it to a thresher. Just positioning the heavy belt required two men. The thresher was a contraption with numerous whining belts and clanging metal parts. It shuddered and vibrated so much that one thought the metal arms would tear apart and fly away.

Few students got to drive the tractor. Sitting high on the seat, the driver bounced up and down on its coiled springs. It was like riding a mechanical bucking bull. The huge, metal, spiked wheels resembled the battering rams of a medieval war machine. The vibrations from the engine were transferred to the steering wheel and then pounded all the way up into the driver’s armpits. The noise from this agricultural leviathan rang in one’s ears for hours. As one can imagine, being selected to drive the tractor was an enormous honor. Schorch, Töpper’s friend, was the first student to drive the tractor because he had previous experience working with farm machines, and he was naturally mechanical. He could be trusted. Töpper never drove the Lanz.