Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind (57 page)

“My registration number is very high”
:
Hertha Feiner,
Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters,
January 1939–December 1942
, ed. Karl Heinz Jahnke (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993).

Germany’s numbers, officially, weren’t actually all that low
:
Author interview with Professor Richard Breitman, August 8, 2012.

CHAPTER SIX. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS

the deportation of the Jews of Stettin
:
Christopher Browning with Jürgen Matthäus,
The Origins of the Final Solution:
The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), p. 64 and preceding pages.

“Men, women, children and even the inmates of the local Jewish home for the aged”
:
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 19, 1940, “Koenigsberg Jews Slated for Expulsion; Stettin Deportees Put at 1,500,” http://www.jta.org/1940/02/19/archive/koenigsberg-jews-slated-for-expulsionstettin-deportees-put-at-1500.

In January, Jews had been denied legumes
:
Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair
, p. 151.

“Solveig’s Song”
 lyrics:
Translated from the Norwegian with the help of Ingvild Torsen, Eli Nilsen, and Nancy Aarsvold.

“The successes in the West are prodigious”
:
Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness,
pp. 337–338.

Earlier that spring
 . . . thirty thousand people had applied:
Richarz,
Jewish Life in Germany
,
pp. 410–411.

CHAPTER SEVEN. THE VISE

In January 1941, Jews are denied the right to repair their shoes
:
Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair
, p. 170.

Gerda Haas, giving testimony to the Holocaust Museum
:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Gerda Haas, June 12, 1995, www.ushmm.org.

“we are convinced that in reality America wants to help”
:
Richarz,
Jewish Life in Germany
, pp. 412–424.

the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, founded in 1756, was kept open
:
See Daniel B. Silver,
Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis
(New York: Mariner Books, 2004).

James G. McDonald, who served as high commissioner for refugees
:
Quoted passages here are from Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart, and Severin Hochberg, eds.,
Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935–1945
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 200–205, 214, 239, 245.

“We can delay and effectively stop”
:
Memo from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to the State Department, June 26, 1940, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/barmemo.html.

“I wish to say
 . . . that if I had my way”:
Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg,
Refugees and Rescue
, p. 248 (and
Congressional Record
).

The New York Times
published a front-page story blaring
:
“U.S. Ruling Cuts Off Means of Escape for Many in Reich,”
The New York Times
, June 19, 1941, retrieved online January 14, 2013.

“Bars have now been raised”
:
Editorial,
The New Republic
, August 18, 1941.

Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was tripped up
:
Patricia Cohen, “In Old Files, Fading Hopes for Anne Frank’s Family,”
The New York Times
, February 15, 2007.

“Rabbi Wise always assumes such a sanctimonious air”
:
Breckinridge Long diary, quoted in Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg,
Refugees and Rescue
, p. 257.

Levetzowstrasse Synagogue
:
See Roger Moorehouse,
Berlin at War
(New York: Vintage, 2011), p. 161.

“And I remembered Storm’s ‘Oktoberlied’”
:
Valy refers to the German poet Theodor Storm (1817–1888). The lyrics to “October Song”
(translated by Ulli Wiesner) are as follows:

The rising fog, the falling leaves:

to wine we are beholden!

The grayish day no longer grieves:

it’s golden, yes, it’s golden!

And if all madness be unfurled

(by church or temple polished),

this world, this most amazing world,

can never be demolished.

And even if the heart should smart

let glasses sound the meeting!

For all we know, a righteous heart

will never stop its beating.

The rising fog, the falling leaves:

to wine we are beholden!

The grayish day no longer grieves:

it’s golden, yes, it’s golden!

Though it is fall, wait just a while,

just wait and keep consuming!

The spring arrives, the sky is blue,

the violets are blooming.

The days of blue shall be at hand,

and ere they all shall leave us,

we’ll let the wine, my noble friend,

reprieve us, yes, reprieve us.

20,000 Jews to be deported to Lodz and Washington knew
:
George Warren (later adviser on refugees and displaced persons) files, Breitman, Stewart, and Hochberg,
Refugees and Rescue
, p. 258.

“I have the impression even the Jewish Council”
:
Jürgen B, in Donald L. Niewyk, ed.,
Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 260–261.

CHAPTER EIGHT.
BURGFRÄULEIN

On the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden
:
See the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, https://cahjp.huji.ac.il, A/176 Jewish Virtual library. Also Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/index.asp.

some 270,000 to 300,000 were able to emigrate
 . . . In Berlin itself . . . some 5,000 to 7,000:
Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair
, chapter 8, “Life Underground,” and p. 228.

Ahawah day-care center
:
Its story is told in Kaplan,
Between Dignity and Despair
, p. 176.

the role of the Reichsvereinigung
:
Information comes from author interviews with Beate Meyer, and from her essays “Between Self-Assertion and Forced Collaboration: The Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1939–1945” and “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” in Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon, and Chana Schütz, eds.,
Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)
.

In 1942, Marianne Strauss
 . . . was able to discover a glimpse:
Roseman,
A Past in Hiding
, chapter 7, “Report from Izbica.”

“A dreadful future awaited them”
:
Interview with Edith Dietz, quoted in Meyer, “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” p. 320.

On the increasing difficulty for even Jews in mixed marriages
:
See Martin Doerry,
My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900–1944,
trans. John Brownjohn (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004).

“These deportations were something monstrous”
:
Camilla Neumann, quoted in Richarz,
Jewish Life in Germany
,
pp. 435–436.

In early January 1942, Valy and her mother were forced to turn in
:
All Berlin Jews must turn in warm items per Wolf Gruner; see Gruner,
Judenverfolgung
.

“To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders”
:
Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem
, in
The Portable Hannah Arendt
, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 348–349.

“To claim that demonstrative refusal, open resistance”
:
Meyer, “The Fine Line Between Responsible Action and Collaboration,” pp. 346–347.

the story of Wilhelm Reisz
:
Doron Rabinovici,
“Prologue,”
Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938–1945
(Cambridge and Oxford, England: Polity, 2011).

“Of some forty women who helped in the beginning”
:
Herta Pineas, in testimony of Hermann Pineas, in Richarz,
Jewish Life in Germany
, pp. 449–455.

Hildegard Henschel, wife of one of the higher-ups
:
Hildegarde Henschel’s Eichmann trial testimony is retrieved from www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/index-02.html.

video testimony from Norbert Wollheim
:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Norbert Wollheim, recorded 1992, www.ushmm.org.

CHAPTER NINE. A NEW NAME

the property files and Gestapo materials
:
I’m grateful to the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam, for copying files and sending them to me. I relied on Rep. 36 A Oberfinanzpräsident Berlin Brandenburg (F 1701) and (II) (Nr. 35551), as well as Rep. 35 A Staatspolizeistelle Potsdam (Nr. 13), regarding Valy’s mother, Toni Scheftel, geb. Flamm. The files on Hans Fabisch come from the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv as well: Landesarchiv Berlin A Rep. 092 Nr. 8636. The Compensation files on Fabisch are from the Landsamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Abt. I Entschädigungsbehörde, Reg. Nr. 303 696. All of the above were translated for the author by Kathleen Luft.