the war with Japan is over. My dear late husband
Julius only wanted to return to Bonn. We never
sold any of our properties, only some of our rentals. He was sure the rogues' reign would not last
too long.
Just now the gong rang for supper. Everyone got
nine new potatoes with mustard sauce, smooth
like mayonnaise, one piece of soft cheese and tea.
I am so stuffed and I gained twelve pounds here.
Occasionally we got small packages in Theresienstadt, an onion and garlic or dried plums
from some of the cousins. I wonder where they all
are? Probably also transported. There are only old
people here. Only in the electric plant were 2,000
women working; the men disappeared with the
labor transport.
In Theresienstadt was Anita with her husband
and six-month-old baby girl. He was deported,
she got scarlet fever, and the baby was put into a
children's home. Her baby carriage was stolen.
She was so weak; who knows if she is still living?
From my daughter Frieda and husband I haven't
had one sign of life in three years.
One night in Theresienstadt I dreamed about my
Frieda. She said, "Mama, I feel so desolate;" she
opened her big blue eyes to look at me. I shall
never in my life forget this. The dear Lord should
only return them all to me. I am so lonesome and
alone here. My daughter Lena and husband and
son were sent away only in October 1944. But she
promised to write to me. I wrote to my son-inlaw's mother in Switzerland, for I was sure that
she had heard from them, but until now nothing.
Therefore I often doubt if they are still alive. But
G-d's hand will hopefully bring them back to me
and He will bring me one day into a home and
homeland again, in His time, when He feels it is
the correct time to do so. I am content if I remain
as healthy as I have until now.
Dear Carola, you have a good husband and fine
children, be happy and be glad that you were
able to escape from this nightmare, as I was saved
from this hell now.
Your cousin Sally had suffered a lot too. Hopefully he is well. His wife and son were sent to
Poland with a transport. His three sisters and
husbands we were told were sent to the Ukraine.
My dears, be a thousand times heartily kissed and
hugged from your often thought about Aunt Tilly.
I wish you a good Yom Tov and all the best for
the coming year. •
(Sent to Sh'ma by Max M. Herschmann,
Park, NY.)
84
Rego
Thoughts on kristallnacht
Miriam Hahn-Cohn
|
>
I
When I was a child the world seemed full of
goodness, love and fun. Even though I spent the
first ten years of my life in Nazi Germany, my
friends and I felt, and still feel, that we had a
wonderful childhood. We were surrounded by
loving, caring parents, had extended families and
enjoyed the company of many good and worthwhile friends. Our teachers were devoted to us.
The Jewish community catered to us. They, the
adults, knew of the hostile world surrounding us
and, perhaps because or in spite of it, gave us
special love and attention.
1
Yes, we were deprived of certain rights and
privileges. We could no longer use the public
gymnasium, swimming pool and skating rink, but ;
we had friends with estates who had private pools
with cabanas and who were happy to have us all
as their guests.
Yes, whenever Nazi bands came down the street
we turned another corner or hid in a doorway.
But no more so than any child in an urban center
today when a bunch of toughs comes down the
street.
i
i
Instead of the very mediocre public school we
were sent to a superb Jewish day school where all
the excellent Jewish teachers who had been
dismissed by the Nazis seemed to have found a
|
home. We had to travel over an hour to get to
school, but who cared, when you were traveling
with wonderful friends? The school and its
teachers were able to instil in us a true love for
learning. It was exciting and stimulating. We
were taught the best of universal and Jewish
knowledge. We learned Latin and Hebrew, Israeli
songs and Schubert lieaer.
The Jewish Community provided us with the best
recreational and cultural activities. It all took
place in a very beautiful, modern community
house designed by the famous architect Erich
Mendelsohn. Since all Jewish boys and girls "hung
out" there, we had plenty of human material to
,
choose from. Our youth group leaders were
!
among the best I have ever met anywhere.
It was there that I learned about a government
system called democracy. No one else in Germany
was teaching about democracy between 1933 and |
1938. It was there that I heard about what was
really happening in the world. The German
newspapers at the time certainly did not provide
that kind of information.
MIRIAM HAHN-COHN lives in New York, NY.
i Faith In Humankind Destroyed
All this changed within a few hours, between 3
I and 5 a.m., the night of November 9 to 10 in
i 11938. Because I was a "Rabbi's kid" and at that
moment lived with my family in a spacious parsonage adjacent to the synagogue, I witnessed the
burning of the synagogue and home in what
d
, became known as Kristallnacht.
i That night made clear to me something that I had
not been fully aware of as a child. It taught me
, what irrational hatred can do to people and what
1 i the consequences of such hatred can be. I was
; brought up to believe that people are not perfect,
• that they make mistakes and that they can be
i thoughtless and unjust. I was not consciously
i1 aware of the fact that people could actually enjoy
ut |destroying property and other people, too. I
jU thought that only criminals did that.
" ' What I remember most vividly of that night was
I the true delight the Nazi storm troopers took in
i smashing delicate objects of art on the floor, kickj.ing in the glass doors of my mother's dining room
, <;sideboard, tearing my father's valuable collection
of rare books to shreds, breaking every window in
.sight. It was the relish, the zest, the joy with
which these men went about their destructive
: business that really got to me. They obviously
ill loved what they were doing.
1
Up in the flames that gutted our synagogue and
• home went my childhood innocence about the
i; goodness of human nature and my faith in the
< ultimate integrity of man. From that moment on
!| I was afraid for my life and that of my loved
ones. That night made crystal clear to me that the
i Nazis would not hesitate to murder and that they
were on their way to doing just that. I needed no
gas chambers to confirm it. I knew it then and
• there.
* I was among those fortunate enough to escape in
time with my immediate family. Still, each year
at that time I am reminded of that night which
taught me something about people in this world
af> who enjoy inflicting limitless cruelty upon others.
It became a lesson not to be overlooked again. •
• Paul celan, "in egypt"
v
I Steven S. Schwarzschild
A1 You shall say to the eye of the stranger: Be the
water.
STEVEN S. SCHWARZSCHILD is professor of
" philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis,
MO. and a contributing editor of Sh'ma.
85
i
You shall seek those whom you know to be in the
water in the eye of the stranger.
You shall call them out of the water: Ruth!
Noemi! Mirjam!
You shall adorn them when you lie with the
stranger.
You shall adorn them with the cloud-hair of the
stranger.
You shall say to Ruth and Mirjam and Noemi:
Look, I am sleeping with her.
You shall adorn the stranger next to you with
greatest beauty.
You shall adorn her with the sorrow for Ruth, for
Mirjam and Noemi.
You shall say to the stranger:
Look, I slept with those.
(Mohn und Gedaechtnis ("Poppyseed and
Memory"), 1952, "Gegenlicht" ("Counterlight"),
in Gedichte ("Poems"), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1975, vol.1, p. 46)
Paul "Celan" is the anagram of Paul Ancel/Antschel, born in Czernowitz, Rumania, in 1920, and
the pen-name under which he became famous as
a poet after World War II. Raised in a Germanspeaking family, he returned to Rumania from
medical studies in France just in time to be
caught by the Germans He survived the concentration camp, but his parents and many others
close to him were killed in the camps. For the rest
of his life he was pervasively haunted by the Nazi
experience. After the war he worked for a while
as a translator, poet, and editor in Bucharest.
Then he went to Vienna, where he first became
well-known for "Death Fugue" (its most famous
line: "death is a master from Germany"— cf. J.
Felstiner, "The Biography of a Poem," New
Republic, Apr. 2, 1984, pp. 27-31) and other
poetry. In 1948 he settled in Paris. He translated
from and into many languages (French, Rumanian, Rissian, English, Yiddish, Hebrew, etc.),
but his own poetry is always, of all things, in
German— a German, furthermore, not only informed by its own history and by other languages
but also increasingly "imploded," hermetic,
endlessly allusive, tending ever more toward
silence. Celan married the graphic artist Gisele
Lestrange. Shortly after his only trip to Israel he
committed suicide bv walking into the Seine, in
1970.
Celan, a Jewish Poet
Celan is by now recognized as one of the most important poets of our age. (There is a very large
and rapidly growing literature about him, much
of it in German. The one full volume on him in
English of which I am aware, Jerry Glenn, Paul