My Grandmother Kept Telling Us About the Nazis. Now I Know Why.

[GeoWilliam750]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/magazine/holocaust-remembrance-grandmother.html?algo=top_conversion&fellback=false&imp_id=379557200&imp_id=783078264&action=click&module=trending&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

"My grandmother Marianne spent her entire life telling the story of how she, her parents and her three brothers escaped Nazi Germany. At Thanksgiving or during Jewish holidays she would recount the same memories over and over, seemingly still traumatized by the violence she had witnessed and the hatred she saw from her German friends and neighbors.

The story she told, preserved in her unpublished memoirs — a combination of her own reflections and meticulously compiled correspondence and records related to her family’s escape — detailed the changes that came as authoritarianism slowly gained power, incrementally at first, so that people became accustomed to them. Writing about her childhood in Pirmasens, Germany, in the years following Hitler’s rise to power, Marianne recalled her non-Jewish friends turning their backs on her, her brothers being beaten up at school by classmates in the Hitler Youth and watching as other Jewish classmates in her public school disappeared, until she herself was no longer permitted to attend. She recalled lighting Sabbath candles on Friday nights in her family’s apartment, with the sound of the Nazi storm troopers’ boots marching past on the pavement, as they sang songs about violently murdering Jews. Six million Jewish people and millions of others were ultimately murdered by the Nazi regime.

Marianne’s immediate family had no illusions about the threat that Nazism posed, though many other relatives thought that it was a phase that would pass, like other waves of anti-Semitism that had preceded it. While my great-grandfather, Dagobert Nellhaus, a rabbi, was not prepared to abandon his congregation, he had already taken some measures for the rest of his family to leave Germany, if necessary. In 1936, after the Nuremberg laws went into force and effectively stripped German Jews of citizenship, one of Marianne’s older brothers, Gerhard, was sent to live in the United States. He became the foster son of a Jewish family, the Blumbergs, in Terre Haute, Ind.

The rest of the family was still in Germany on Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses and synagogues during what became known as Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.” Some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Dachau, Buchenwald and other concentration camps. The morning after, as my grandmother recalled, Dagobert took her and her brother Martin to the collapsed ruins of the synagogue. They must have watched in shock as their father trod through the charred remains where the pews had stood, where congregants had faced toward Jerusalem and watched him lead prayers from the bimah, the elevated platform from which the Torah is read. Marianne was just 11 years old. In her memoir, she recalls that he searched the ruins and found a Torah, which Jews traditionally treat with the dignity and reverence that would be accorded to an important person. The three of them walked the short way home to find the S.S. waiting to arrest Dagobert. They confiscated his library, including a sizable collection of Jewish books and artifacts and, Martin still remembers, a Torah. My great-grandfather and around 150 other Jewish men from Pirmasens were taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he was held for a little over a month. While he was in Dachau, my great-grandmother, Minna — who spoke little or no English and must have needed to find translators to help her — desperately contacted the Blumbergs in Indiana to try to get American visas for the entire family."

More at the link.

[sprinkleeninow]

1. Both sets of my grandparents got the hell outta Czechoslovakia (Austria Hungary) before you-know-

what was fixin' to hit the fan. They made a new life here in the states, raising children who had us grand kiddos. My maternal grandfather was said to have gotten down, kissed the ground and exclaimed "God bless America" upon disembarking. Good thing they've all gone on. This what's happening here today would destroy them.

Many and blessed years to you in health and happiness!

[erlewyne]

2. I was stationed in Berlin, stood guard on Hess

Your thread is devastating.

I was drafted and knew I was going, so, what the hell, I volunteered
for combat engineers and Vietnam. 1967, I served in the infantry the
full year 1968, the deadliest year of 'Nam'. A democratic president
(LBJ) lied and got us there (for oil).

I got sent to Berlin Germany instead of 'Nam'. Nothing I could do
about it and I sure as hell did not protest. The army sucked.

One day this Dubcek character from Czecholsavakia revolted and
Berlin was closed down. Helpless. Surrounded by Russia, a hundred
kilometers inside the iron curtain, some 20 years after WWII. That
was pithy compared to the Jews. I was stuck in Berlin Germany
while my compatriots were involuntarily murdering and being murdered
by the Cong.

MAGA