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My Dear Ones: One Family and the Final Solution. Jonathan Wittenberg
Читать онлайн.Название My Dear Ones: One Family and the Final Solution
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008158057
Автор произведения Jonathan Wittenberg
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
In simple terms, the Ha’avara – or transfer – system worked as follows: Jews planning to emigrate to Palestine could, whether or not they already had the necessary travel documents, deposit sums in the relevant account in Germany, known simply as Konto 1. If they were successful in reaching Palestine, a percentage of the money would be returned to them by the Anglo-Palestine Bank after their arrival, either in currency, movables or real estate. In this way they were able to take a fraction of their capital with them out of Germany. At the same time agriculturalists in Palestine could purchase from German manufacturers the essential equipment they needed. Meanwhile, by far the greatest proportion of the assets of all German Jews was simply stripped from them in the form of special levies and stolen by the state.
It was from the offices of Paltreu that Regina had received her fateful letter after Kristallnacht in 1938. Matters had changed drastically since Alfred had obtained his papers five years earlier. Two separate elements had contributed to the worsening of the situation. In the first instance, Nazi policy towards the Jews had become increasingly more savage, contemptuous and brutal. Yet for many the second factor constituted, at least until the outbreak of war, no less of a barrier to escaping from Germany. The attitude of the British government towards Palestine had altered sharply. In 1936 what became known as the Arab Revolt began with violent protests against what was seen as excessive Jewish immigration. It continued with varying levels of intensity for several years. At the same time, the probability of war became ever more imminent. With major bases in Egypt and North Africa as well as in Palestine itself, Britain was anxious not to jeopardise its position in the Middle East by antagonising local populations and their leadership. This concern culminated in the White Paper of May 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over the following five years, a figure calculated to ensure that Jews would not exceed a third of Palestine’s total population. To David Ben-Gurion, then head of the Jewish Agency, and to the leadership of the embryonic Jewish state, this constituted a betrayal of the commitments promised in the Balfour Declaration. For many Jews stuck in Europe and desperate to get out, it would prove fatal.
In the meantime, applicants faced further dilemmas. The already severely limited number of places on the British quota was further divided into categories. For which kind of certificate should they apply? Category A, itself split into five sections, was for immigrants with their own means of support. Visas issued in this class were known as ‘capitalist certificates’. Category A1 was for those with at least 1,000 Palestinian pounds available to them in the country. To qualify for category A2 one had to be a practitioner of one of the ‘free professions’ and to possess at least 500 Palestinian pounds. The category recommended by Alfred’s friend on the Paltreu team was A4; it applied to those in receipt of a regular pension of not less than 4 Palestinian pounds per month. But it had also become virtually impossible to move money out of Germany. As Alfred was to write later in the year concerning the desperate situation of his brother, one needed relatives or friends abroad to guarantee the funds. But at least at this point in time, the Jewish community was still able and willing to forward her full pension, should Regina succeed in emigrating to Palestine.
Regina, however, was troubled. What if the political situation should degenerate to the point where it was no longer possible to send any monies out of Germany at all? She didn’t want to become a burden to her children who were struggling to make ends meet in a new and impoverished country. Yet matters were only going to get worse and soon there might be no opportunities left for leaving Germany at all, with or without funds. As Alfred’s friend had written:
I would urgently advise you to get the process of obtaining a pensioner’s certificate underway before it is too late. As the transfer of funds to Palestine is congested and is no longer available at all for other countries, one hears every day of people who emigrate leaving their entire fortune behind. Also, it’s always better to take the risk that one can still count on the transfer of enough to live on for another 6 or 12 or 18 months, than to wait until this opportunity too has passed.
Regina made the application, and was refused.
While Regina was opening her letter, Ernst was in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. The Gestapo had found him at home in his flat above the synagogue in Frankfurt on the morning after Kristallnacht, and took him away.
Buchenwald, the concentration camp in which Ernst Freimann was interned after Kristallnacht. (Yad Vashem Photo Archive)
Ernst loved Frankfurt: ‘Wie kann ein Mensch nicht aus Frankfurt sein’ (‘How can anyone not hale from Frankfurt’), he wrote fondly in his memoirs, quoting the local poet Friedrich Stoltze, though no doubt the reputation of the Jewish community and its many illustrious rabbis interested him more than the renown of the great city itself. He’d lived there since his early twenties, when he obtained a much sought-after internship at the university hospital. ‘I found a furnished room next door to the apartment building where my uncle lived,’ he recalled; wholesome kosher meals were provided every day. The uncle referred to was his mother’s younger brother Aron, curator of the Judaica section at the municipal library.
Ernst had been halfway through his medical studies in Breslau when he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army as a health inspector; he was awarded the Iron Cross for his services. Following demobilisation he completed his degree in Würzburg with a dissertation on Arabic medicine. He began his career by serving there as assistant doctor at the pharmacological institute, before settling in Frankfurt in 1924, where ‘family connections opened me to even the houses of the richest and most choosy families.’ He faithfully recorded the names of the rabbis and relatives he met in the city, with whom he regularly studied Torah, and how his medical practice had functioned. As it began to thrive, he moved to a two-room apartment heated by a coal-fired stove and equipped with a gas burner which ‘I used for cooking and urine examinations.’ He was one of the first people in Frankfurt to acquire a direct-dial telephone. Initially most of his patients were poor East European Jews whom he treated for free, but he gradually acquired more affluent clients and was able to earn a respectable income. This was of particular importance because ‘it was the custom in Germany that one married only if one was able to make a living’. The best families were not slow in coming forward with suggestions as to whom such an eligible young man, son of a famous rabbi and an up-and-coming doctor, should meet. ‘Many attempts to get me married failed,’ he noted wryly. But then a lady patient whom he was treating for pulmonary tuberculosis suggested he be introduced to a niece of her friend, a young woman called Eva from the well-known and well-to-do Heckscher family. He took his aunt Therese, Uncle Aron’s wife, with him on his second visit to the lady in question because he ‘trusted her judgment in such important matters’. His confidence was to prove well-founded; Ernst and Eva would enjoy a marriage of over sixty years. I remember them well from their annual visits to London. He was a quietly spoken gentleman; she a spritely and down-to-earth lady concerned for the welfare of each and every member of the family. Ernst lived to be 97, Eva 102. ‘Every year I make a point of reading a different commentary to the Torah,’ Ernst told me, the sacred books he was currently studying lying close by on the table. It was a small glimpse into the world of Torah-learning coupled with excellence in the professions and a deep interest in culture which formed the hallmark of