Immediately
after Kristallnacht my mother told me to get out, to leave Breslau as soon as
possible before it was too late. She’d
heard that the Australian Government would accept fifteen thousand Jewish
refugees over a three-year period, provided they had a sponsor and ‘landing
money’. My father had died two years
previously, so it was left to a family friend to put an ad in a Melbourne
newspaper, The Herald, offering the services of a children’s nurse. Even so, it occurred to me that my
application might well be censored by the police.
Well,
I’d got no qualifications and certainly had no idea about looking after
children. We were an upper middle-class
Jewish family and employed a live-in housemaid and a children’s nurse. We lived on the first level of a large,
luxurious apartment with a beautifully decorated interior and a spacious
verandah like a loggia.
I
have to admit I was very spoilt. Even
when I was naughty, my mother would not allow me to be smacked. I was most embarrassed to be driven to
primary school in a horse and carriage, much to the envy of my
schoolmates. They craved to hitch a
ride, whereas I cringed at the very sound of clip-clopping hooves. I felt relieved when my father bought a posh
Maybach car, an elegant black saloon, so we were a pretty swell family. My father owned a retail/wholesale silk
business situated in the heart of the medieval city, but he was a refined
gentleman, an intellectual, also president of the Literary Society. I was extremely close to him and loved our
regular discussions on just about any subject, especially on those long holiday
walks in the mountains along the Czech border.
We liked to stop at one of the chalets for coffee and enjoy the views of
tranquil scenery. Sometimes I grew
scared walking so close to the edge of a steep precipice. My father would be happily chatting away when
a passer-by called out, ‘Why don’t you take the child on the inside?’
One
day a letter arrived from Vernon Smith, who incidentally happened to be the CEO
of the Shell Company. He was offering me
a position in a private capacity and enclosed an entry permit. This was great news! However, due to thousands of refugees rushing
to flee Germany, both Jews and non-Jews, it was practically impossible to
embark by boat. The quickest passage was
by air.
As
the date for departure drew near, my excitement mounted, but it was
heartbreaking for my mother. ‘I can’t
let you go, Leah! I can’t let you go!’
she would cry repeatedly. ‘It’s the
first time you’ve gone away by yourself.
How can you possibly manage, a young girl like you?’ But she must have sensed that at least one of
our family had to escape the clutches of the Nazis. My brother, who was bright, very bright and
fairly tall for his twelve years, was already open to Nazi abuse, but was far
too young, so mother thought, to travel to a distant world.
I caught the train to the Dutch
border. Through that long, dark night,
travelling south-east, I was very much afraid and utterly confused about where
I was heading. My fears were confirmed
when I was strip-searched by a female border guard. What a terrifying and degrading business that
was! At least I’d broken out of Germany
and was on my way to Amsterdam.
On
February 18th, 1939 the KLM plane left the Dutch capital. In those days passenger planes did not sail
through the night skies, so every evening we touched down at a new
airfield: Naples, Marseille, Persian
Gulf, Karachi, Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Darwin, and, at long last, Sydney. As a reminder of those stopovers, I’ve kept my
old Reise Pass encased in its khaki leather cover and signed by the Police
Commissioner. On every leg of the flight
I felt airsick and could barely eat anything.
Besides, the food on offer at the hotels at which we stayed was too rich
for my upset stomach. My earliest
memories of Australia were of the bushfires raging away over northern New South
Wales. The extent of all this blackened
destruction made me question the wisdom of coming to Australia.
The
final stage of this marathon journey was to catch a train to Melbourne on the Spirit
of Progress. Arriving in the
Victorian capital on Saturday, March 2nd, I was greeted by Vernon
Smith’s somewhat indifferent chauffeur, who drove me to my temporary lodgings
in Toorak Road and showed me St Mark’s Church, but left me to my own
devices. Unfortunately, the only food in
the house was cereal, but I neither knew what it was nor how to eat it. Nor did I know about the function of milk
bars as I wandered about Toorak.
Yes,
I was naïve in the extreme. For a start,
I imagined that the sun always shone in Australia, only to discover that I had
brought the wrong clothing for autumn in the southern hemisphere, so there I
was shivering in my light, summery dresses.
What’s more, I was foolish enough to walk alone through Alma Park in the
dead of night without heeding the consequences.
My mother would have had a fit!
Now
I was desperate to obtain a landing permit for my family. Eventually I received one from the
Immigration Department. Passage for my
mother, brother and aunt was booked for October. Cruelly, war in Europe had broken out in
September. I was to hear nothing from my
mother, but I continued to send messages home via the Red Cross in Switzerland.
Although
I was good at English, I could hardly understand the Australian accent. However, in Breslau I had been apprenticed to
a chemical firm where I learnt shorthand and typing and gained some
administrative experience. I very much
regretted not being permitted to take matriculation by the Nazis. After Kristallnacht they destroyed all the
prayer houses and Jewish schools. Jewish
teachers did open their own schools, but were forced to call them ‘classes’,
not ‘schools.’ Luckily, it was easy to
find work in Melbourne. You could hand
in your notice one afternoon and commence a new job the next day, a situation
that was to last until the early seventies.
The standard weekly wage for women in domestic service in those days was
one pound including keep. For office
work the boss might occasionally slip me a few shillings extra under the
table. One of my short-term jobs was to
act as children’s nurse in Caulfield.
Goodness knows what my mother would have thought of that!
Though very homesick, missing those beautiful walks in the mountains and visualizing the familiar sites of Breslau from the tram routes in my mind, I gradually made contact with fellow Jews. There was a big intake of Jewish immigrants in 1939. Already rumours were spreading about the labour camps amongst the Jewish communities, but Australians refused to believe the horror stories about concentration camps. I had no idea about the fate of my family in Germany, not until many years after the war when my younger son, William, made a remarkable discovery.
Later
still, some sixty years or so later, I finally heard about the siege of
Breslau. How Hitler had decreed in 1945
that my birthplace should be turned into a fortress; the last stronghold of the
Third Reich must be defended at all costs against the advance of the Red
Army. All civilians were forced to leave
– thousands died in the bitter cold. It
was feasible that some fled to Dresden, but that beautiful city was bombed
weeks later by RAF Bomber Command.
German troops, namely the Wehrmacht and Volkssturm or home guard, as
well as slave labourers occupied Breslau from February 13th, but
their task was hopeless. After fierce house-to-house fighting, the city
centre was laid to ruin by the Soviet artillery. The Red Army encircled the city and the
garrison surrendered on May 6th, the last major city in Germany to do so; in
fact, one day before the end of war in Europe.
It was estimated that thousands of civilian and military personnel were
killed or taken prisoner.
None
of this I knew, but I dreaded to think what might have happened to my loved
ones. Had it not been for eventually finding the
truth about my family’s fate, I might have assumed that in September, 1941
they’d been caught up amongst the Jewish contingent driven from their homes in
Breslau and crowded into Judenhaeuser, then deported a few months later to
Auschwitz or Theresienstadt.
Then
one day, quite out of the blue, William, my son, who was determined to find out
what had happened to my mother and brother, was scanning the records of Nazi
victims on his computer. Those Nazis
kept meticulous documentation.
Incredible though it seems, he recognized the names of my mother and
brother. Such a terrible, terrible
thing, but it’s all such a long time ago now.
They were shot by a Nazi firing squad in Lithuania in 1941.
Why
was I spared that most dreadful fate?
Why was I blessed when every member of my family was murdered? At that time I did not feel guilty. I could barely make sense of what was
happening. However, in later years I
have felt the burden of guilt weighing on my shoulders. You see, I did have quite a good time here in
Melbourne during those war years. I’ve
always been a curious person and I was eager to discover more about my adopted
country. I read a lot, gathered a circle
of friends, enjoyed dancing. And I
married my first husband, Fred, who was also a German Jew. Ironically, our two sons became lawyers, a
profession forbidden to Fred under the Nazi regime.
Of
course, I could never go back to my old home.
Breslau is now part of Poland, thanks to Stalin’s claim for compensation
for the atrocities of war. The city has
been completely rebuilt and even has a new name: Wroclaw.
I wouldn’t recognize the place, nor would I understand the language
spoken. I too have tried hard to change
my identity, to erase any trace of my Germanic past and embrace my Australian
identity. I am most thankful to have
been given a second chance in life.
July 23-August 23, 2012
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