NB For my new readers: I publish episodes of my family saga on Sunday mornings. Past episodes are on laurelevy.substack.com
New parts of my ‘Hallmarks of Tyranny’ series are published at least once a month, mid week.
Episode 9
The Nazis operated through ‘us and them’ politics.
They blamed the communists for the Reichstag fire in 1933, when parliament was burned down. The Nazis claimed the socialists were planning a violent uprising, and used this as an excuse to introduce emergency legislation, which abolished a number of constitutional protections, paving the way for Nazi dictatorship.
The Reichstag Fire Decree (1) suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Political opponents could be detained without reason, and political parties banned, as well as laws overruled.
In 1934, when there was a slump in Nazi popularity, they stepped up their propaganda against the Jews. A year later, the Nazis introduced the Race Laws of 1935 to cement social division into German society. They propagandised that the Jews were an inferior, weaker race, who threatened the strength of they, the Germans, the Aryan ‘master race’.
They passed two distinct laws in September 1935, collectively known as the Nuremberg Race Laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour.
According to the Reich Citizenship Law, only people of “German or kindred blood” could be citizens of Germany. People with three or more Jewish grandparents, were Jews by law. Under the law, Jews in Germany were not citizens but “subjects" of the state.
The second law passed in 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, forbade marriage and courtship between Jews and other Germans, and the employment of non German female servants by Jews.
By this time, Henner had found his way back to Altenburg, feeling like a fish out of water in London, where he was unable to gain any status to remain. Above all, he was homesick. He loved developing his own department in the family store, and, once back, went to Berlin every week to buy new stock.
He had a blond ‘Aryan’ girlfriend, and drove round the town in an open top car, with her in the passenger seat.
One day the local police station phoned M&S Cohn’s and asked if the young Herr Levy would call in to see them.
“ We can no longer watch this behaviour with the girl,” they told Henner.
“It must stop, or we will be forced to arrest you.”
In Berlin, Henner had cousins who were in jail, for being seen out with ‘Aryan’ girls, so he knew he was lucky to only get a warning. He realised that the pressure from the National Socialists now overrode the loyalty officials could display to the family.
His girlfriend wanted to keep seeing him, so they met, instead, in Leipzig, where they were not so known. Henner would then drop her off at home, after dark.
Henner was hosting a New Year Eves party for his friends, at the end 1935. The day before, he went on a buying trip to Berlin with his father, and they had breakfast on the train, as was their habit on these occasions. On the journey, Albert asked him:
“What do you want to drink for your party?”
“Champagne.”
“Champagne! That’s outrageous! Who do you think you are?” Albert shouted and slammed his hand on the table. “ A lord or something! The party is off!”
In Henner’s words:
“Then we arrived in Berlin, and the first coat manufacturer we went to, took my father to one side. Next dress house we went to, they took my father to one side. I said:
“What are they doing here?”
My father said:
“They are speaking very highly of you. You can have your party.”
Without that party, Ruth’s life would have been very different.”
Ruth was Henner’s oldest sister.
That year, Henner had to change football teams, no longer permitted to play with his ‘German’ Altenburg club. He joined a Jewish team in Leipzig. He invited his new Jewish football team mates to the party. Unbeknown to them, Henner also invited his old friends from Altenburg.
When the Jewish friends saw the Altenburgers there, they were flabbergasted.
“How can you have Christians here?”, they asked.
“These are the friends I grew up with. I’ve known them all my life,” he told them.
His friends from Leipzig knew how dangerous the consequences for mixing had become.
The party, however, continued. It was on the ground floor of the house, below the Levy’s apartment. Albert appeared at midnight. The noise was too much for him. He saw that a young man was kissing his daughter Ruth. He called Henner over, and blasted him for not looking after his sister properly. In his mind, people only kissed, after they were engaged. So Henner had allowed his sister to be dishonoured.
Albert insisted the young man, called Rudi, propose to his daughter. That night, Ruth got engaged, and Rudi became one of the family. Ruth and Rudi had met only once before, when Rudi visited the shop Ruth worked in. As fortune would have it, they were a happy match.
Albert’s Dutch relative, Jac, had not let go of his mission to find the family a new base. He bought Henner a boat ticket for South Africa, and reckoned that this time, it would be too far for him to return home. He bought a second ticket for Rudi.
In 1936, it was one of the few places accepting Jews, resulting in an influx of German Jews. However, this caused some disquiet, and a short while later, the country closed its doors to Jewish immigration.
Jac invited the two young men to gain work experience in his factory in Amsterdam, for the few months before they set sail. I imagine this was to get Henner out of Germany, before he ended up in jail for flouting Nazi laws.
Henner said no one asked him if he wanted to go to South Africa. Or indeed prepared him for what lay ahead. He set sail for Cape Town in 1936, knowing nothing of the country - nothing of it’s politics, climate, animals or geography.
Ironically, Henner was forced to cross the world to another continent, because of one set of Race Laws, only to find himself in breach of similar laws in his newly adopted home.
To be continued…..
Next week:
Henner has to be educated in South African ways, and back in Altenburg, Franze is watched by the Gestapo.
(1)https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-reichstag-fire