The Last Jews in Berlin (41 page)

“No,” Fritz said. “Only an old man.” He did not know if he was understood, but he went on. “I am a Jew. I want to thank you.” The Russian shook his head and shrugged; he obviously didn't understand. So Fritz repeated the words he had found in a Russian-German dictionary in anticipation of this moment. “I am a Jew,” he said in German.

The officer shook his head, and now he spoke in broken German. “No. Jews. Germany. Dead.”

Carefully Fritz raised a hand to his shirt and unbuttoned it. Then, slowly, he reached beneath the shirt and pulled out his undershirt, to which he had pinned his Jewish identity card—once again, in anticipation of this moment.

The officer looked at the card incredulously. “You're really a Jew?” he said suddenly in Yiddish.

“I told you so,” Fritz said when he had recovered from his astonishment.

The Russian grinned at him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out several watches. “Here,” he said, handing a gold one to Fritz, “have a watch.”

Then Fritz turned and walked swiftly back into the building and down to the shelter. “The Russians are here,” he announced to the other tenants.

Fritz took Marlitt and Lane immediately to the flat. They hid there for several hours, hoping that if the Russians came looking for women, they would find what they wanted in the cellars and not bother looking in the flats. But there were no longer any Russians in the streets when Fritz finally peered outside, only dead and dying German soldiers and dead and dying horses.

At last Fritz opened the window. A warm and fragrant breeze immediately flowed into the room. Lane came over to the window. “Oh, Uncle Fritz, it's so nice outside,” she said.

Fritz put his hands on Lane's shoulders and turned her to him. “I'm not your Uncle Fritz,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I'm your father. From now on you can call me Papa.”

Lane thought for a moment, and then she nodded. She did not seem in the least surprised.

They waited for another hour, watching the sunny street. There was no movement and no sound, except for an occasional low moan from a dying man or horse. At last Fritz said to Marlitt, “Let's go. I want to show people that we're living. I want to tell myself that we're free.”

They walked from the building and into the street and then down the street, stepping around the bodies, Fritz on the right, Marlitt on the left, and Lane between them, holding onto their hands.

AFTERWORD

O
N
L
IBERATION
D
AY,
Fritz Croner made a pilgrimage to the apartment of Frau Kosimer, his “Catholic” benefactress, to thank her once again for hiding him and his family the night they went underground, only to learn that she herself was a Jew who had lived on false papers throughout the war.

On May 4, 1945, two days after the fighting had stopped in Berlin, Russian troops set fire to the Swedish church on the Landhausstrasse. Erik Myrgren, Erik Wesslen, Vide Ohmann and other members of the church staff spent the next several weeks in the Swedish legation alongside the Tiergarten and were then evacuated to Sweden via Russia.

In mid-May several Russian soldiers seized Tamara Geroschewicz, the thirteen-year-old Russian ward of Hans Hirschel and Countess Maria von Maltzan, dragged her to a bombed-out flat above the countess' apartment, and raped her. Alerted by Lucie Geroschewicz, Tamara's younger sister, the countess summoned a passing Russian officer, who accosted the soldiers as they emerged from the building. The soldiers were quickly arrested, tried and executed by a firing squad.

Within the month Makarow, the white Russian who had befriended Fritz Croner throughout the war, was arrested by the Russians and deported to the Soviet Union. He was never heard from again. Nor were other persons whose deportations were related in this account: Fritz Croner's parents and uncle; Hans Hirschel's mother; Ruth Thomas' husband; Kurt Riede's mother and stepfather; Wilhelm Glaser's mother; and Hans Rosenthal's nine-year-old brother.

Soon after the war ended, Wilhelm Glaser and Ruth Gomma were married, as were Hans Hirschel and Countess von Maltzan. The latter couple were divorced some years later, only to remarry each other a few years before Hirschel's death in 1975.

All of the other principals in this narrative were still alive in December 1980, and all but Joseph and Leokadia Wirkus were still living in Berlin. Hans Rosenthal, married and the father of two children, is West Germany's best known television personality, the chief of entertainment for RIAS Berlin, master of ceremonies of numerous quiz shows, and the president of a soccer team. Fritz Croner has prospered as a jeweler and devotes much of his time to lecturing to youth groups about his own experiences and those of other Jews during the Hitler era. Ruth Thomas has pursued a wide range of interests since the war, including music and design. Wilhelm Glaser is retired, following many years as a merchant. Kurt Riede, also retired, lives in Frohnau, on the northern fringe of Berlin, with his wife, Hella. They have frequent reunions with the Wirkuses, who live in Düsseldorf, where Wirkus is a civil servant. Countess von Maltzan practices veterinary medicine in a ground-floor apartment a block from the Kurfürstendamm.

One other party to this account continued to live in Berlin following the war—Stella Kübler, the “blond ghost,” whose work for the Gestapo accounted for the capture of hundreds of underground Jews. In 1946 Kübler appealed to the Jewish community of Berlin for help, on the grounds that she had been a victim of the Nazis. Recognized by a number of Jewish survivors, she was arrested by the Russians, tried and sentenced to ten years of forced labor. On her release in 1956 Kübler went to West Berlin, where she was again recognized, arrested, tried and sentenced to ten years of forced labor. But the sentence was overturned on the grounds of double jeopardy. Kübler, who reportedly still lives in Berlin, maintained throughout that she had been mistaken for another catcher.

Exactly how many underground Jews were still alive in Berlin when the war ended is a matter of conjecture. In June of 1945 the Jewish community of Berlin placed the number at 1,123. But others suggest that the survivors could not have exceeded a few hundred.

Whatever the correct number, it is tempting to ask how these few—less than one percent of the number of Jews in Berlin before Adolf Hitler took power—survived when so many others did not. What special qualities linked Fritz and Marlitt Croner, Hans Hirschel, Ruth Thomas and her mother, Anna Rosenthal, Wilhelm Glaser, Kurt and Hella Riede, and Hans Rosenthal? The answer is as obscure as the question is obvious. Certainly all of them wanted desperately to survive, but so, presumably, did all the Jews who perished. And certainly all of them had faith that they would somehow prevail in spite of the inhuman struggle that confronted them—but they were not the only Jews to have such faith. “Those who survived said they believed they would, and this belief undoubtedly sustained them,” Hans Rosenthal reflected in Berlin in 1978. “But how many of those who perished also believed they would survive?”

There are, however, two questions that can be asked more profitably. The first is why the principals in this story did not leave Germany before it became impossible to do so. The second is why they elected to remain in Germany after the horror had ended. The questions are not unrelated.

The decision to leave Germany after the advent of Hitler would seem an easy and obvious one now, but the prospect of abandoning one's traditions, relationships and possessions for the hazards of a foreign land and tongue, with little or no capital to begin life anew, could not have seemed attractive at the time. So there were compelling reasons for the Jews in Germany to deny reality—either refusing to believe that the Nazis represented an enduring menace or that they themselves were vulnerable. Somehow they would be spared, many Jews believed, either because they had good contacts or simply as a consequence of luck. By the time reality had overpowered even these considerations, it was too late. The Germans would no longer let them leave.

Was there some other element influencing those who remained? After four years with this material I am unable to dismiss the thought that it was desperately important to these survivors to affirm that they were something more than Jews. In Nazi Germany that was an impossibility from the first day of the Third Reich, but the need to be German in spite of everything has resonances in every Diaspora Jew. Acceptance as Germans—or Americans or Frenchmen or Englishmen—implies acceptance as Jews. For most Jews this is life's preoccupying struggle.

The Jew is loyal to his country in a way that is perhaps incomprehensible to non-Jews. He needs to belong, not so much for the privileges of membership as for the assurance that as a legitimate citizen of his country of birth or choice he is free at last to be a Jew as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No previous book of mine has involved so many people or such generous donations of time.

I would like, first, to thank all the major figures in the narrative for their willingness to bring such a painful past back to life: Fritz Croner, Ruth Gomma Glaser, Wilhelm Glaser, Countess Maria von Maltzan, Hella Riede, Kurt Riede, Hans Rosenthal, Ruth Thomas, Joseph Wirkus and Leokadia Wirkus.

I am grateful as well to those who helped me reconstruct the involvement of the Church of Sweden in clandestine efforts to save Jews and other oppressed persons from the Nazis. The trail led from Berlin to Sweden, where I found Erik Myrgren, the pastor of the church during the closing months of the war, Vide Ohmann and Meri Siocrona, who had worked as aides of the church, and Martha Perwe, Erik Perwe's widow, who, in addition to relating the story of her husband's work, gave me his diary to use. Göte Hedenqvist, one of the pioneers of this extraordinary human salvage operation, confirmed details of the Church of Sweden's historic role. A three-part series in
Expressen
, Sweden's leading evening newspaper, in June 1945, helped to flesh out the story. One part was devoted to an interview with Martin Weissenberg less than two months after he and his wife escaped from Berlin with the church's help, when his recall of the events was fresh and keen. All of the sources connected with the Swedish church in Berlin had vivid memories of the work of Countess von Maltzan and the assistance she furnished the Jews, both on her own and in conjunction with the church.

In Stockholm, I had the additional help of Staffan Hedblom and Kjell Holm, of the Swedish Foreign Office, and of two good friends, Sven Broman, the editor-in-chief of
Âret Runt
, and Trent Eglin, a young American who makes his home in Sweden. Another good friend, Gunilla Nilars, of Swedish Television, and her associate, Inger Söderman pointed me in the right directions.

In Berlin, Ilan Goldman, a talented young journalist, demonstrated incredible resourcefulness and initiative in checking through the past, and he also served as translator at all my interviews. His mounting excitement as the many stories developed reinforced my own. I am also grateful to Christa Maerker, friend and fellow journalist, to the author James P. O'Donnell for sharing so much of his knowledge of Berlin and World War II, and to Gisela Weissner, of the protocol office of the city of Berlin.

I would like to thank the staffs of the Jewish Community House in Berlin, the Wiener Library in London and Tel Aviv, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for their assistance and guidance. Doctor Dov Kulka, of the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his assistant, Esriel Hildesheimer, resolved many conflicts that could not be settled elsewhere.

While several dozen texts and innumerable survivors' accounts deepened my understanding of this event, one extraordinarily rich and comprehensive book was my companion throughout:
The Twelve-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945
, by Richard Grunberger (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).

Many times after my return from Europe I felt the need to consult with an old friend and former colleague, Tom Tugend, who is now an information officer at UCLA but whose early years of life were passed in Berlin.

I am grateful to Eric Lasher for urging me to take on a project that meant so much to him, and to my agent, Sterling Lord, for acting as our go-between. And while most writers are, lucky to have the wise counsel of a single editor, it was my good fortune to benefit from the wisdom of three: Nan Talese, Tom Wallace and Catherine Shaw. The manuscript of this book also received a close and loving copy editing from Louise Lindemann.

Most acknowledgments include a traditional thank you to the author's family for their patience and understanding. In my case, I am thanking two coworkers: my wife, Jacquelyn, who helped me throughout an intensive research trip to Germany; and my son Jeff, whose gift for languages and degree in history were put to heavy use in Sweden, Israel and the United States.

L. G.

About the Author

Leonard Gross is a journalist and author. Much of his reportage was done for
Look
magazine, where he served for twelve years as senior editor, Latin American correspondent, European editor, and West Coast editor. Gross has authored, coauthored, or ghostwritten a total of twenty-two books, including both novels and nonfiction. He currently lives in Bend, Oregon.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 1992 by Leonard Gross

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

ISBN: 978-1-4976-8938-1

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com