Letters From the Lost (27 page)

Our dear parents spent more than a year in our circle, surrounded by what then was such a large and extended family. I think it was the nicest year of their life. Certainly it was the quietest year of their normally so hardworking and productive existence.

There was a constant coming and going of visitors, so that on Saturday afternoons, there were often not enough chairs. Uncle Fritz and Hilde, Uncle Heinrich with his wife, Walter Waldstein with his young bride, the Urbachs and the Fränkels, my in-laws, Edith and Viktor, and of course Papa Grünhut were almost daily visitors in this family circle.

Papa, Uncle Fritz, and I were the unshakable trio of optimists who never gave in. Again and again, we knew of new facts and indicators that would guarantee, or at least point to Hitler’s demise. The greatest of German victories and the worst battering of our own freedoms could not disabuse us of this conviction.

I also made every effort to keep up our guests’ spirits, and I pushed the good humour act to its limits. At that time, I played all kinds of instruments. Above all, I was best at the accordion. I had a wonderful instrument, a piano accordion with a keyboard, 90 bass buttons, and three octaves.

I went about studying it in a completely scholarly manner. I had someone from the conservatory as a teacher, and by dint of extraordinary hours of practice, I was making nice progress. After three to four years, I had the dexterity and could read notes well enough to play operas. This music gave me immense pleasure. It was my only source of distraction, the only one still permitted to a Jew.

But soon, that too was forbidden. I switched to the guitar, then to the Hawaiian pipe, the mandolin and finally, when all musical instruments had to be turned in, to a mouth organ.

Lacking the opportunity to do other things in those days, I discovered a talent for singing and whistling to accompany the guitar. I had a whole booklet of cheerful German and Czech songs and poems, and I entertained our many guests for hours with my productions.

To my great regret, my beautiful accordion went missing during the events of the May revolution here in Prague. Although I had forfeited so much, this particular loss pained me the most because I still cannot get a replacement for it today.

And so, we lived peacefully alongside our dear parents, until the call was issued to us to report for the transport to Theresienstadt. Our dear parents’ number came up in July 1942, Vera’s and mine a month later.

Now I have to reach back and chronologically describe the unfolding of events.

Contrary to expectations, nothing changed in our situation after the entry of the Germans. It remained thus for over a year. We had already begun lulling ourselves with the sweet thought that everything would remain the way it was, that we as non-German Jews would remain unshorn, when the vexations began.

The Germans followed the principle of not doing anything to us themselves. Instead, they first trained the Czechs in anti-Semitism, and in this, they succeeded very well.

For our first horrendous surprise, they picked Yom Kippur, the holiest of days, to make us turn in all radios and report the sum total of our financial worth.

Blow upon blow followed, usually at two-week intervals. Always something new, something else that was forbidden, some unexpected limitation that made our life difficult, until bit by bit, life became impossible.

Restaurants and coffee houses were forbidden, then theatres and libraries, then all parks and public grounds, even public baths and swimming anywhere.

Shopping time was limited to a few hours in the morning and in the afternoon, later to only a single hour in the afternoon when there was nothing left in the shops.

Bit by bit, we were forbidden to buy almost any groceries. First, we could not buy sugar and candies, then meat and fish, then even jam and any dried fruits like prunes or raisins, then even vegetables, milk, cheese, etc. Finally, there was nothing left except bread, flour, and potatoes.

It was forbidden for us to take a streetcar except to and from work, and even that, only standing up in the last car. Bit by bit, we were banned from all streets and city squares in the downtown area.

Later, entire areas of the city were forbidden to us. Finally, we were not allowed even to be on the street on Saturday afternoon, so we were simply under house arrest every weekend.

The worst though was the Jewish star; a mighty yellow splotch
above the heart where in satirized Hebraic script stood the German word “jew.” This was the worst discrimination, for with this single move, they delivered us up to the mob at the command of the lowest of human urges.

And yet, that still wasn’t the worst. Something much worse came next. Overnight, in entire sections of the city, they threw the Jews out of their homes and penned them up in ways unworthy of human beings.

Four to seven families in a single apartment. Because we lived on a main street, we alone had the unheard of luck to be spared this terrible evil.

My absolutely incomplete total has not yet included the full number of torments. Next came the endless list of bureaucratic vexations, the countless and limitless regulations concerning possessions and property of Jews and the enumeration, registration, delivery, and distribution of said possessions.

No two weeks went by without such an ordinance appearing, and these two weeks were usually filled with obtaining and filling out forms, packing and delivering the itemized objects, so that I coined the witticism “Being a Jew is a profession.”

A thousand hugs and kisses from your Arnold

————

T
HIRD
L
ETTER

July 12, 1945

My Dear Ones,

I hope that you have received both of my letters and I want to continue my description as best possible.

They used the whole powerful force of bureaucracy and red tape to strip the Jews of all their possessions, both portable and fixed. First they stripped the very rich, the ones who had houses, factories, businesses, etc. Then, with every conceivable form of spitefulness, it was our turn.

My company was not even allowed to pay me my salary directly. The money had to be processed through the bank where we were only allowed to be on the premises one predetermined hour of the week.

Then came the surrender of hundreds of items that normally, one would not even think of as possessions. In uninterrupted sequence, usually in two-week intervals, this laborious bureaucratic machinery would be set in motion. It hit us Jews all the harder because the various offices were only rarely open to us, and they created problems for us at every step of the way. It began with radios, then paintings, carpets, works of art. Next were musical instruments, trunks or suitcases, any tools or technical instruments, cars or motorized conveyances, all ski equipment, all gold and silverware. Then we had to turn in leather goods and furs, and later, even wool clothing and underwear if you had more than two sets. They did not even stop with the poor animals. All dogs and canaries had to be taken to the collection depot.

Now you must not think that we constantly had our pants full or that we promptly and correctly complied with all the regulations. On the contrary, we sabotaged whatever we possibly could, knowing that all was lost for us anyway.

On principle, we delivered up only very few and mostly useless things and we chose to give things away rather than throw them into the jaws of the Germans. We risked our necks repeatedly in those years, knowing that the Gestapo would not waste time on the fine print if one of us were caught.

However, thank God, everything always turned out well, even if we constantly had our head in the noose and we stood with one foot in crime and the other in the grave. Thus, for example, I worked in the factory for a whole year without wearing the yellow star. As I approached the factory, I would cover the star with my briefcase, and then, in the factory I would cover it with a lab coat without a star. Meanwhile, Vera practiced medicine illegally for over two years in her back room while her surgery stood empty.

You can well imagine how dangerous this was, and how many precautions we had to take, since all contact with Aryans was strictly forbidden. We even refused to give up our Sunday outings and our outdoor bathing, even if we did have to find a hidden spot. Nice game, playing hide-and-seek with the Gestapo and the police!

With food too, we in no way followed the regulations. I kept my job at Parik’s until almost the end of 1940. Then I had to leave the firm, but I found another job almost immediately, albeit no longer in a managerial capacity.

I began to work as production controller in a factory that made precision tools, mainly small precision parts for military aircraft. My job was to supervise the precision of semi-finished and completed products. It was mostly a matter of a thousandth of a millimetre or less, so the responsibility was great. This was doubly true because military agents came to the factory to take possession of the finished product. Still, although the salary was rather low, the work itself was pleasant, easy, and not strenuous.

I worked here for over two years until the anti-Jewish campaign drove me out of this job as well. I had already become a source of admiration as one of the very few Jews who were still working.

And still, I found another job almost immediately. This one was in a factory in Straschnitz that made gas masks and precision instruments. I was only granted three weeks at the job, for just when we were the busiest, my name came up for the transport to Terezin.

Of course, even in the matter of the transport, we did not stand by idly and wait to be led to the slaughter. Instead, we used every conceivable means and subterfuge to put off the date of our entry. Next, despite warnings of extreme penalties, we did not report for registration, and when they forced us to do so, with Emil’s help, we simply disappeared. Emil had a job in Jewish Community Services and he was able to remove our cards from the file from which the transport lists were compiled.

But in the end, we packed up kit and caboodle and awaited our
deportation. For us, it was the beginning of a new world and a new life. Of course, one could only take a limited amount of baggage— I think it was 40 kg. We were supposed to leave everything else in the apartment, and this was to remain unlocked. Of course, this was another regulation that we did not obey. We each took with us about 70 kg, and we gave things away. The carpets and some of Vera’s instruments, which of course should have been delivered up long ago, went to good friends for safekeeping. We gave many other things to the cleaning woman, to the caretaker of the building, etc. In the apartment itself, we only left a few things just for show.

The assembly place for the transports was a part of the fairgrounds where radios and furniture were usually displayed. The surroundings were grim, a real entry to and a foretaste of what awaited us later and actually never again left us in all the years ahead: filth, vermin, slops to eat, straw to lie upon, latrines, no opportunity to wash, and raw, bestial treatment.

I was quite able to bear all this. I had gotten used to it during World War I, and I took everything with a grain of salt. I had two bottles of cognac and some chocolate with me, and I just let things be. However, with her exaggerated love of cleanliness, my poor dear Vera absolutely could not adjust to this pigpen, and the latrine especially inflicted such violence on her that she suffered from total constipation for more than a week.

From the very first moments, Vera practiced medicine and devoted herself to every single person as if they had been private patients. In no time, she had become not only the best-known doctor but also the most beloved person in the entire transport.

And this quite extraordinary belovedness, yes, this almost deification remained her very own trademark in the years that followed. Because of her ultra-good heart and the repeated success of her medical skills, people really honoured and adored her. They showered her with gifts, as they did no one else. Vera, however, was unpretentious and modest. She simply believed that it was her duty to help every single person to the utmost of her ability.

After about a week, two thousand of us were shipped under Schutzpolizei surveillance to Terezin. At the railway station in Bauschowitz, which is about 3 km from Terezin, the S.S. received us and immediately ordered all suitcases to be left behind. We never saw them again. We took with us whatever we could manage, but it was a hot July day, and the enforced march with much too heavy gear quickly turned into a torture.

During our entry into Terezin, the streets had to be emptied of all inhabitants. Doors and windows had to be closed, so that nobody could have any contact with us until we had been “appropriately prepared.”

They locked us into the old subterranean casemates from which we were only allowed to emerge after a thorough inspection of our bodies and our baggage, an inspection that stripped us of our most valuable belongings.

Even here, we cheated if we could. Dressed in the habit of a nun, Cousin Erika appeared before us and took some things for safekeeping. Thus, we were able at least to save watches, medication, and the like.

Then we were assigned lodgings. Vera was assigned to a house and I was sent to the barracks. Neither one really coincided with the meaning of the word, nor with any possibly associated terminology. Both house and barracks only looked like their namesakes from the outside. On the inside, they had been altered for mass settlement in accordance with German ingenuity and conceptualization.

Every house block had only a single entrance, usually in a back alley or a side street. All other doors and gates were locked off and nailed shut. In the courtyard, they had torn down the walls separating the individual buildings, sheds, stables, etc. Thus, from a single block of houses, they created a residential block that was numbered the way the streets are numbered. Every room inside a house from the cellar to the attic was inhabited by as many people as there was room for by laying them on the floor. Not until much
later did it occur to people to fetch straw, then bags of straw, and finally, boards. Not until two years later did the first primitive plank beds appear as substitutes for real beds.