Friday, 25 October 2013
Memories of a German Childhood
By Henry Lowenstern
Some people have vivid - and detailed - memories of childhood. Mine are only a few. One of them is my childhood ambition of wanting to be the driver of the funeral hearse.
Funeral processions passed our house regularly in my small German hometown, Korbach in Waldeck, and I always ran to the street or to a window for a closer look.
At the head of the procession was the fancy black hearse bearing the black-draped coffin drawn by two black horses. Then followed the procession of mourners, in black, walking silently behind. Sitting high atop the hearse was the carriage driver, also dressed in black, wearing a glorious black top hat and wielding a long whip over the horses.
Usually, no one at my house knew who was being buried. If I were the driver, I reasoned, I would be able to wear a glorious black top hat, wield the whip and I would know who was being buried.
My next memory is less innocent. It involves a different kind of a procession along our street.
At the far end of our town was a training camp for Nazi SS recruits. SS stands for Schutzstaffel - literally, “protective staff.” It was the most brutal of the Nazi storm trooper organizations.
When the column of recruits came to our street, on which were a number of Jewish-owned stores and homes, the goose-stepping recruits sang at the top of their voices: Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt, dann gets nochmal so gut. (When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, things will be a lot better.)
Needless to say, I did not run to the street or to a window for a better look.
When the Nazis came to power in early 1933, my parents and many others in our town thought they could wait them out. Governments in the Weimar republic had come and gone in quick succession and many people were confident that “This too shall pass.”
So, when the harassment and boycott of Jewish-owned businesses began, my father and others stammburger (solid citizens, as they believed themselves to be) thought they could outlast or even fight the harassment.
My father’s clothing, yard goods and bedding business was regularly targeted for broken display windows and sidewalks white-washed with the slogan, Juden sind Volksverater (Jews are traitors).
After a few of these incidents, my father, who was pretty handy with poster materials, went to our synagogue and copied the legend on a bronze commemorative plaque that had been presented to the Jewish congregation by the German government. The plaque listed the ten members of the congregation – my father’s brother among them – who had been killed in World War I while serving in the German army.
Below the names was the promise: Des Volkes Dank ist Euch Gewiss (You can be certain of your fatherland’s gratitude). I remember that my father placed his poster behind the broken glass in one of his display windows. It made him feel better but it was soon removed by the Nazis.
Perhaps it is just as well that I don’t have many more childhood memories.
[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Please read instructions for submitting.]
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post
Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.
Henry:
When my family left Poland around 1905, they brought me a gift - life. The relatives who stayed behind were not so lucky. Der mentsch trakht, und Got lakht.
Marc
Posted by: Marc Leavitt | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 06:54 AM
I recently lead a book review of Sarah's Key. Your story would have been a good one to add to discussion. Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Barbara Sloan | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 07:44 AM
So important to keep these memories alive - thank you Henry
Posted by: Jeanette | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 08:11 AM
What we do to each other is horrific. Shameful. And few societies are blameless.
Keep telling what you can allow yourself to remember, Henry. And may you have peace.
Posted by: Deb | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 08:44 AM
Survivors like you should keep telling your stories to educate folks like me, that denigrating and labeling others is not the American Way.
It's best you don't remember all of it, just continue reminding us how it all started!
Posted by: Janet Thompson | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 09:40 AM
My husband was born in Stettin in 1935 and at ten fled to Lubeck on a train that his grandfather worked for. He told me many tales of his youth, and I am just amazed by how it must have been growing up taking such awful things almost for granted. His father taught him to beg from the farmer, and he and his sister were nearly killed by strafing.
Will we never learn, war is hell.
Posted by: joanne zimmermann | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 11:53 AM
I remember clearing out a box at
my grandmother's one day and coming across a letter from her young niece in Poland written just when Hitler came to power. She was
begging for help for the family to get out. She asked if a letter could be sent to President Roosevelt for help. She did make it out to South Africa and after the war to Israel. Sadly she was the only the only one of her family to survive
Posted by: Estelle D | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 02:04 PM
When many of us complain about how tough things were for our families, we should reflect on the horrible way families such as yours were treated. We were lucky.
Posted by: Gabbygeezer | Friday, 25 October 2013 at 03:18 PM
My father often spoke of the fear that the general population in Germany had of being targeted for speaking out during the Nazi period. Those who knew of the concentration camps and did nothing are often labeled as cowards, and I suppose they were. But after seeing the way our population complacently does nothing for the lockup of prisoners in foreign lands or even the Japanese citizens here, I think common people act fairly predictably. They do nothing out to draw attention to themselves, yes, out of fear of retaliation against the ones they love. The stories of the heroes who saved many make stand out even more. This piece was fascinating. Thank you for sharing it.
Posted by: Beth | Monday, 28 October 2013 at 08:42 AM