Wertheimer_Helen

Boston North Inc.

Present Memories

I was born with the name Helga Wachenheimer in Karlsruhe in the state of Baden in the southwestern part of Germany, on January 22, 1932 at a time when things were going well with the Jewish community in Germany. My childhood was about as normal as any child growing up in a middle class professional family. I was lucky to be surrounded by four grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. By the time I emigrated, only three grandparents were still alive, one grandfather having died a few years earlier. Life was good and we were an economically comfortable family. Shabbat dinners were always with the grandparents. Because I was a child, I was sheltered from the political events occurring around me. I only became aware of things happening against the Jews later in 1938. I was not able to go to a public school because a law passed in 1937 forbade Jewish children from attending. Jewish teachers had been fired from the public school system as early as 1933, and so with the expulsion of the children from the public system in 1937, these unemployed teachers formed what was called a Jewish school, not a parochial school in the American sense, but a school where the essentials of early childhood education were taught. The building used was adjacent to the Liberal Synagogue. I started school in the fall of 1938 when I was six years old. Shortly thereafter, on November 9th, 1938, Kristalnacht occurred. The adjacent synagogue was destroyed and there was a question of whether we would be able to continue our schooling. Neither the school building on the left nor the building on the right were affected.

We saw many Nazis on the street. There were constant parades with men in uniform. Frequently, when my older brother and I walked to our Jewish School, older boys and girls would follow us, ridicule us, and chase us down the street. I did not fully understand what was happening, but knew that things were not well. My father had lost the right to continue with his medical practice. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, one of the first things lost was the ability to collect insurance from his patients. This essentially meant that non Jews who had health insurance (administered through the government), no longer could avail themselves of it if they saw a Jewish doctor. Those who wanted to see my father, and that was only allowed to the Jewish population, had to pay privately. He was able to practice his profession until 1937 or 1938, after which this was denied him. Jewish lawyers had lost the right to practice before the bar in 1933 unless they were veterans of World War I. Their ability to practice their profession was denied the same as the doctors.

I personally did not directly witness Kristalnacht. My cousins lived in the building adjacent to our Synagogue, and witnessed the entire ordeal. In 1938, Jews had been denied the right to live wherever they wanted to, and so we had moved into the clinic of a colleague of my father who was no longer allowed to practice medicine. My cousins, their parents, my grandparents, and my widowed grandmother had to move to a building which was considered Jewish because our Rabbi had lived there prior to leaving Germany and moving to the United States. They were all witnesses to the burning and looting of the Synagogue adjacent to their building.

I did not really understand what had taken place. My father had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp on November 9th. Interestingly enough, later on in life he told the story of how he and some friends had returned from a meeting that evening when they saw a lot of empty trucks in the center of the city. One of his friends had commented, “I have a feeling tomorrow they are going to pick us up”. Sure enough, as prophesied, on November 9-10, 1938, the Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 60 were picked up and arrested. They were kept in the local jail for a couple of days and then transported to the Dachau Concentration Camp located outside of Munich. My mother, almost immediately, attempted to get him released from the horrors she assumed he was enduring.

I do recollect that my mother had wanted to leave Germany almost as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933. My father did not share her ideas and even though he realized that times were not going to be easy. He had faith in the German people and the rule of law. Being a physician was his profession and German was the only language he spoke. He questioned how we would be able to sustain ourselves in a foreign country where we lacked the ability to speak the language and so fought emigration until it was too late. The day he saw the handwriting on the wall was the day he entered Dachau.

Almost immediately upon my father’s arrest, my mother made a visit to the Gestapo to try to get my father released. She told them that we were going to emigrate to the United States and that he was to come with us. The Gestapo asked her if she had a United States Quota number which elicited a negative response from her. They told her in no uncertain terms, that she had no chance to leave without that number. They also told her to take her children and leave without my father. She answered that this was not what she had in mind and she did not get married to leave him behind.

Shortly thereafter she went to the American Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany, and waited on line with many others hoping to emigrate. When her turn finally came, she got Quota Numbers for the four of us which, had we stayed where we thought we were safe, would not have come due until 1943 or 1944. By that time we would have been deported to the gas chambers in the East. In the late 1930s, the American quota for people from Germany was 25,000 per calendar year. As we learned many years later, the consular offices, by order of our antisemitic State Department, had been ordered to stall immigration so that no more than 12,500 Germans were admitted in any one calendar year. At about the same time, in November 1938, when the English opened their doors to help in the rescue of children, the Americans were asked if they would offer to do the same. The issue was debated in Congress, stalled in committee, and ultimately rejected. It was considered abnormal for parents to be separated from their children. The same topic was reintroduced in 1940, and with a war already under way, the Americans again vetoed the suggestion.

After my mother’s experience with the American Consulate, she went to the Cunard White Star Shipping line to buy four tickets on any ship leaving for the United States. One of the first questions she was asked was the numbers of her American Quotas. When the officials of the shipping line saw how high her numbers were, they refused to sell her passage. Not being daunted by that, she told the officials that she needed the tickets to get my father out of Dachau. Whether it took a bribe, or whatever else was necessary, my mother was able to accomplish her purchase. With these tickets in her possession, she went back to the Gestapo, showed them evidence that we were leaving, and was able to get my father released from Dachau. He had been there approximately three and a half weeks.

Upon his return we saw a beaten, broken man. I remember this very faintly. He was sick and had to be nursed back to health. The men in Dachau were treated very brutally. When they were arrested at the beginning of November, the weather in Germany was already quite cold. They were forced to stand out of doors for many hours in bad weather. The barracks in which they were ultimately housed were primitive and lacked sanitary facilities. Food was minimal or practically non-existent. Every man had all the hair on his head shaved off. My father always had a mustache which was also gone when he returned home. He let it grow back and had it till the day he died. Upon his release he was told that he had to leave Germany within a specified period of time, otherwise he would be rearrested and there would be no chance of his even contemplating ever seeing his family again.

My father left Germany four months later on April 20, 1939, Hitler’s 50th birthday, while the whole country was enveloped in the celebration that birthday engendered. He went by way of France, across the English Channel to England where he had friends and distant relatives. Now my mother was left with two small children, a nine year old son and a seven year old daughter. The question was how could she manage to get us out before more disturbances made this an impossible task. At about that time, through an article in the weekly Jewish newspaper , “Juedische Rundschau”, published in Berlin, she learned that, thanks to Jewish members of England’s Parliament and concerned Jewish social workers who were disturbed by what was going on in Germany, a KINDERTRANSPORT was being organized. The children were to come from Germany, Austria, annexed in 1938 and now part of greater Germany, and the Sudeten part of Checkoslovkia which was annexed in March 1939. Great Britain had volunteered to remove these children from harm’s way provided that their safe keeping would not be a burden on the English taxpayer. Each child had to have a guarantee of 50 pounds sterling. Families were asked to come forth and offer hospitality to these children “for the duration”. No one knew exactly what that meant. If no homes were available, the children would be housed in a camp-hostel environment, on farms, in domestic service in the homes of English people, schools, orphanages, etc. My mother immediately thought that this was an ideal way to get my brother and me out of the country and applied for our names to go on the list. She was met by unbelief from her own mother and in- laws. How could she be so thoughtless and send two young children into a foreign country where they did not know the language, did not know under what circumstances they would be housed, etc. She stood her ground.

My brother and I were scheduled to leave about the third week of July, 1939. Our luggage could consist of only as much as we could individually carry. We were allowed to take 10 Marks German currency and no valuables of any kind. My mother took us to the railroad station and left us with the Jewish social workers who were our escorts for the trip. These workers had been warned that if they decided to remain in England and not return, their families would be arrested. In their absence, these social worker’s families were held hostage. We did not know when we would see our mother again. We were encouraged to write a note home, which the social workers ultimately mailed on their return. When we arrived on the German side of the Dutch border, we were all ordered off the train. Our luggage was searched for illegal items and returned. We boarded again and were greeted on the Dutch side with cookies and hot chocolate. After a night in Holland, we boarded a Channel steamer, arrived in Harwich, and were trained to London where we were to be dispersed. Our father briefly met us, welcomed us, but told us that he could not take care of us as he was living in a rented furnished room and had to find a way to get our mother out of Germany. We were sent to the Russell School, a boarding school which had become an orphanage. There were limited facilities and we ended up with other refugee children, sleeping three to a bed. The food was not what German children ate and it took some time to get used to this. There was never enough for all.

My father was successful in getting my mother out by obtaining a domestic visa for her, which meant she would be a domestic in someone’s home. But foreigners in England were not allowed to work if they had a transit visa, allowing a stop over on the way to another country. My mother arrived in England on or about the third week of August 1939. On September 1, 1939, the war with Germany began. In the nine months that the rescue operation was in place, from December 1, 1938 to September 1, 1939, 10,000 children were saved. The youngest was 18 months of age, the oldest no more than 16. When a child reached the end of his/her 16th year, he/she was exiled to the Isle of Man. In order to escape that fate, some of the young men decided to join the British Armed Forces.

With the start of the war and the possible bombing of major English cities, the government thought it wise to send all children from the larger cities out into the suburbs and provinces. Our school was relocated to the village of Richmond, which became our residence for the rest of our stay in England. When my mother wanted to come to visit us, having no funds except what she was given by welfare organizations, she had to ask her landlady for a loan to buy a train ticket. Thus, visits were rare and very cherished. My mother did promise that we would be able to join her and my father as soon as they learned that we could travel to the United States.

When we arrived in England, my brother and I had very Germanic names and it was recommended that they should be anglicized. Thus Horst became Henry, and Helga became Helen. My brother further changed his name to Harry upon arriving in the United States. Feeling very alone and strange in this country, we were constantly together, and I came to look upon my brother as both mother and father. We were so inseparable that we even said we would bathe together and not with other children of similar gender. Slowly, but surely we started to learn the English language which was to be of great advantage when we finally arrived in the U.S.

With the start of the war, many people who had lower American quota numbers and were left behind in Germany fell by the wayside. Thus, our high number fell dramatically, and we were notified that we would be able to come to the U.S. at the end of 1939. My mother had her steam ship tickets which she had bought to get my father out of Dachau. With these in hand, she went to the Cunard Line and they said they would be honored as soon as space became available. By the middle of December 1939, we were able to board the HMS Lancastria for the trip to New York. Because the North Atlantic at that time was heavily infested with German U-Boats, passenger ships could only make the trip as part of a convoy. With the start of the war, the English had asked the Americans for help in procuring material goods, food, ammunition, etc., and President Roosevelt had granted them that right in the form of lend-lease. Ships left England empty, were filled at US ports, and returned to keep the English supplied. Passenger ships were allowed only in the middle of this circular transport. As the war progressed, our ship was converted into a troop ship until it was hit by a German submarine and sunk. It did not survive World War II.

We arrived in the United States on December 27, 1939. The trip was longer than usual, as we had to zigzag through the North Atlantic in order to avoid the U boats. The ship was full of European passengers, refugees like us, and some English who wanted to sit out the war in a more peaceful country. My mother had a sister who had arrived in the United States in 1938. Her economic situation was deplorable. She had attempted to work at insignificant jobs to keep her head above water, but had not been successful at it. She was single, did not come to the pier to welcome us, and was relatively unknown to us for quite a while. My father had the phone number of a colleague who immediately came to offer us assistance. He took us to his apartment where we stayed in makeshift accommodations until my parents were able to find a furnished apartment in the vicinity. We had absolutely no money as we had been forbidden to take any out of Germany. All of our worldly possessions were stored in a lift container in Hamburg, Germany, where it survived and was auctioned off to needy people after the war. We received financial assistance in the form of loans from distant relatives, friends, and from HIAS, (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).

My father wanted to practice medicine again, but in order to do that he had to take an English language exam before he was allowed to sit for his medical state boards. His studies, first in the English language, and later on for his medical revue, took up most of his time. In addition, he took a job as a resident at a small hospital in Brooklyn, NY. When he was finally fully licensed, the hospital allowed him to join its attending staff. In the meantime, my mother went to work, first as a chamber maid in a New York hotel, and later on doing sewing at home so that she could supervise our growing up and activities. My father had begun practicing medicine in 1927. It was now 1940 and a lot of the theoretical data had either changed or had been forgotten by him. . He knew how to practice medicine, but the multiple choice questions asked on exams, required an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. Ultimately he passed his boards, and, in 1942, opened a practice to be a General Practitioner. This required the purchase of medical equipment which could only be procured through loans. We made a number of moves, ultimately to an apartment, and later on to our own house, which housed the practice on the first floor, while we lived on the second.

The children who arrived in England, for the most part, survived the war. When the war was over, they tried to find out what happened to their parents. Through the Red Cross and other organizations they learned about the inevitable. Of the 10,000 children rescued, 60% never saw their parents again. Some remained in England, others left for the United States where relatives asked to have them come, and some went to Palestine, later Israel, to help in the founding of the new Jewish state. Those parents who survived the war, having gone through the horrors of the concentration camps, made a valiant attempt to find their children. This was not always a happy event. Parents had sent small or adolescent children away, and now, after six years, they were totally unrecognizable and had become self sufficient adults. Many no longer spoke German. Some felt that their parents had abandoned them. Parents wanted to resume their roles as protectors and nurturers. In many cases this was met with total failure. Reconnecting after this long absence was at best difficult, at worst, impossible. In many cases, time and patience was all that was needed. There were no two situations that were similar. Interestingly enough, most of the Kinder ultimately got married, raised families, and tried to give their children what had been denied them. They entered the professions, were successful in their various endeavors, and led normal lives. Two of the “Kinder” became Nobel Prize winners.

When we left Germany, we left behind a large family. As stated before, these included my grandparents on my father’s side, my grandmother on my mother’s side, my father’s sister with husband and two young children, and an assorted group of more distant aunts and uncles. Their history was tragic. In October 1940, one of the first deportations was from the states of Baden and the Palatine (Pfalz). Over 6,000 Jews, without warning, were routed from their homes in the middle of the night, told to pack for a lengthy trip, take warm clothes along, walked or were trucked to the railroad station, and placed on trains heading west, across the border to France, where they ultimately ended up in the French Pyrenees. They were convinced they were being sent east to Poland and never imagined being sent to southern France. There they were placed in barracks which had been used during the Spanish Civil War by Loyalists who had crossed the border to avoid the new Franco regime. The conditions there were deplorable. The barracks had no floors. There was no heat. The latrines and showers were a distant walk away. The older people in short order became sick and the death rate started to climb. By 1941, half of the original deportees had died and their place was taken by refugees who had been living in France and who had worked their way south when France fell to the Germans. At this point, France was divided into the northern “occupied” area, and southern “Vichy” run-area. Because of the overcrowding, many of those remaining were dispersed to other camps. My husband and I visited these sites after his retirement in 1987. My grandfather succumbed to the primitive conditions in the camps, died in January 1942, and is buried in one of them. Just one month before his death, he and my grandmother celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We have a photograph of them, taken by the Quakers or the Red Cross, with all my other relatives sitting on wooden crates in the mud. How this picture came into our possession, is a mystery. Of all the people in that picture, about thirty in number, only my grandmother on my father’s side and my two cousins, the children of my father’s sister, survived. Many years later, through the Serge Klarsfeld Foundation, we learned of the fate of our relatives. A book was published listing 80,000 names of Jews living in France who had been sent to the killing centers in the east. Each train transport is listed alphabetically with the date of departure, date of arrival, most always to Auschwitz, but also to Majdanek and Treblinka, and with the date of birth next to the person’s name. At the beginning of each chapter is a statement that says how many people were on the transport and how many were alive when the war came to an end. Now with German records available, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the tracing service in Arolson, Germany, we have been able to verify all this data so that one looking for evidence of members of a family can find closure.

My grandmother had been born in Alsace-Lorraine in 1869 at a time when this was a part of France. Two years later in 1871, it was ceded to Germany, and in 1918, it was returned to France. As she was fluent in the French language, she was able to survive. She was asked to assist in the running of the Camp both as interpreter and in seeing to the welfare of her fellow inmates. Because of her work and because this was still under the Vichy Government, she was given her walking papers for her to go anywhere in France where she would be safe. The papers were to assist her in transit across France. She brought these papers with her when she came to the United States after the war. She contacted some people she knew who were living in Annecy,in the Haute Savoie in eastern France, and they invited her come to stay with them. In the meantime, my cousins had been taken from Camp de Gurs, had been moved with their mother to Camp deRivesalt where they were taken under the protection of the O.S.E.,(Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants), a French welfare agency, always a step ahead of the advancing Germans. They moved the children under their protection from one safe place to another. The family in Annecy that was protecting my grandmother was able to locate them and had them join them there. Annecy, at that time, was under the auspices of the Italians and Jews there were relatively safe. When the Germans occupied the eastern and Vichy part of France, Jews were again in great danger. They needed false identity papers in order to stay alive. By the grace of God, they were never denounced to the Nazis and survived the war. The rest of the family, who were all in the picture of my grandparents 50th anniversary, either died shortly thereafter or ended up in Auschwitz where they met their fate upon arrival.

We did not know what had happened to the family throughout the war. Mail which had gotten through until 1941, had ceased. My grandmother had my parents address and contacted them as soon as the war had ended. Now came the difficult task of having them come to the United States. This was finally accomplished late in 1946. Repatriation of American troops took precedence in finding ships to bring them here. Ultimately, they were able to board a freighter leaving from Marseilles and landing in Galveston, Texas. From there, they had to come by train to New York. It was a joyful and tearful reunion. Our family went from our original four to a composite of seven. My grandmother was able to celebrate her 80th birthday fully restored to good health. My cousins, although greatly undernourished, flourished and became American citizens. In time, we were all married and led comfortable lives.

Now, when I speak to students or adults, I show them my identity card which has a swastika on it and a huge red “J” to show that I was Jewish. I point out that I, and every other Jewish female, had to take the middle name of Sara, and every Jewish male had to take the middle name Israel. We lost all of our possessions that my mother had so carefully packed to take with us to the United States. Luckily, my aunt, having arrived in the US before the war began, was able to take photo albums of the family along with her. They are the only pictures we have of our days in Germany. They will be passed on to the next generation.

HELEN WERTHEIMER

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