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Nov. 10, 2006
Kristallnacht relived
Wrenching letters shed light on the Shoah.
PAT JOHNSON
By the time of Kristallnacht – 68 years ago this week –
many German and Austrian Jews had read the writing on the wall and,
if possible, had escaped the Nazi regime.
In the cruel years between the ascension of the Nazis to power and
the events of Nov. 9-10, 1938, many Jews had fled. Kristallnacht,
a day and night of organized pogroms across Germany and Austria
signalled the advent of the most virulent anti-Jewish violence and
attempted genocide, and ended any hope most Jews in these countries
held that life would become any easier under the Nazis.
Jews of other European nations – which would be overrun by
the Nazi onslaught – did not have the same period of adjustment.
By the time the Nazis invaded Poland and then occupied much of Europe,
genocide was already in the works.
For this reason, much of the correspondence remaining between Jews
living in Nazi Europe and those who escaped to the United Kingdom,
North America, Palestine or elsewhere, is from German Jews, said
Prof. Chris Friedrichs, a University of British Columbia history
professor who delivered this year's Kristallnacht Memorial Lecture
Sunday night at Beth Israel Synagogue. So, while a trove of correspondence
exists documenting the last, despairing messages from the Jews of
Germany before the hammer of Nazism felled them into silence, few
such letters exist from elsewhere in Europe, because those Jews
did not have time to flee.
"Millions more never wrote to anyone," said Friedrichs,
"because they had no one to write to."
Two ways that historians investigate the Holocaust, he said, include
viewing it in context as a massive genocidal catastrophe or, conversely,
extrapolating the magnitude of the events by investigating the cases
of individuals, families and villages in that period. The latter
was the approach Friedrichs took in this year's memorial lecture.
Four recently uncovered stashes of letters from that era have found
their way to Vancouver, he said, including a collection from his
wife's family. In these four bundles lay the stories of four families,
but the lessons are much broader.
Because the United States remained neutral until the bombing of
Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, letters from Germany continued
to be delivered, though censorship precluded free expression. Cryptic
messages were embedded in many letters, implying growing hardships
and the disappearance of optimism.
"No hope of ever seeing you again. But close to my heart forever,"
reads one missive that fell within the restrictive 25-word limit
imposed by the Red Cross, which conveyed the messages out of Nazi
Germany.
"Circumstances have changed," wrote another, in an enigmatic
message the writer hoped would pass the censors.
Friedrichs's wife, Dr. Rhoda Friedrichs, herself a historian at
Douglas College in New Westminster, recently obtained the letters
her grandparents wrote to their two daughters who made it to America.
In them lies the story of the terrible last days of the couple.
As the grandfather, Carl Rosenberg, fell into dementia, he was deported
to a sanitarium. The grandmother, Thekla Rosenberg, succeeded in
obtaining a visa for travel to Cuba, from where she was to make
her way to her daughters in the United States. But it was December
1941 and, when the United States entered the war, that ray of hope
died too.
"All plans collapse," Friedrichs said. "No more letters
are possible."
In 1942, Rosenberg was known to be working in a Berlin Judenhaus
(Jewish house), where a number of Jewish women would reside, leaving
daily to work in war factories. In November 1942, she was ordered
not to report for work.
The Nazis' records indicate that Thekla Rosenberg was deported to
Auschwitz on Nov. 27, 1942, but no inmate number was issued to her.
She was gassed on arrival.
The Rosenbergs' letters, and those of other Jews trapped in the
vise of European Nazi domination, grew increasingly desperate and
"laced with a subtext of accusation."
In one instance Friedrichs described, a Jewish family was admitted
to Canada as farmers. Afraid they would be sent back if their identity
as Jews was discovered, the family – who had been shopkeepers
in Europe – were struggling to learn farming techniques and,
at the same time, hide their Jewishness. Letters from the Old Country
begged them to travel to Ottawa and plead for the admission of just
a few relations.
"You are our only hope," said a letter.
Given not only the family's own desperate attempts to hide their
true identity, but the reality of Canada's anti-Jewish immigration
policies, such pleas were fruitless.
"It was an agony when the letters stopped," said Friedrichs.
"But maybe it was a relief, too."
Some letters would be delivered after the war, when the correspondents
were gone. In one case, the batch of letters ends with one dated
1945, from an uncle, the only surviving member of an extended family.
"He knew the fate of each one and he described it," Friedrichs
said of the final letter.
"For years, [family members] had waited for news from Europe,"
he said. "But not news like this."
In many cases, these letters had been read once and then stored
away permanently – "too precious to throw away,"
said Friedrichs, "too painful to read again." They were
found, variously, in dark cupboards, covered in dust.
Prior to Friedrichs's lecture, the ceremonial lighting of six candles
representing the six million were lit. Six Holocaust survivors –
Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, Marion Cassirer, Mary Knopp, Inge Manes,
Harold Silverman and Bronia Sonnenschein – were assisted in
lighting commemorative candles by six university students –
Elysha Ames, Kirsten Davidson, Mia Edbrooke, Alex Konyves, Ben Rabinovitch
and Ken Rose. Cantor Yaacov Orzech and the Vancouver Jewish Men's
Choir sang "El Moleh Rachamin."
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
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