I am very pleased to welcome new subscribers:
🌿 episodes of the family saga go out on Sunday morning - Episode 1, in the archive, is Night of Broken Glass.
🌿 My writing on tyranny goes out during the week. I posted on Thursday, the first short piece on big money, and scapegoating at times of political change.
🌿 It’s lovely to receive comments. To enable this facility you need to first log in, with your email, at substack.com.
🌿 Thank you for following my writing
Episode 13
It is now done. All the family are out of Altenburg, the place where Marianne arrived in 1890, with her sister Selma, to manage a small shop, in the market place above. They bought and grew it, into a department store. At its peak, in 1930, M&S Cohn’s was Altenburg’s most popular store, with 40 departments and 160 staff. The three generations of the family had become a respected and valued part of the small town’s life, living together in two apartments, under one roof.
The Nazi regional government, from 1930, brought hostilities to the door of M&S Cohn’s, and then the National Nazi government brought dangerous threats and destruction. Thousands of locals supported the family, during the first Boycott of Jewish businesses, but, alas, threats to their personal safety warned them off future demonstrations.
The red spires, and symbol of Altenburg
Altenburg was the family’s story for 48 years: 40 productive years, before eight years of destruction. That family photographs and stories, survive in Altenburg today, is a testament to how integral they were to the town’s life. This marks the end of the family’s life in Altenburg, but not their relationship to it, which I will return to, at a later time.
On leaving Altenburg, the girls became re-united with their mother Franze, who had fled to Amsterdam a year before. She had been staying with Albert’s cousin Jac van der Velde. He lent the family his summer house by a lake. Lotte was moved to be in a kitchen with her mother again, even though the food wasn’t very good!
It was fortunate that Jac pressurised the Dutch authorities to issue entry visas for the family. Herr Ula also stepped up to the plate one more time for Albert, by bringing his car over from Germany.
However, the house had no heating, and the family froze for their first months in Holland, through the last month of 1938 and the remaining winter into 1939. Albert sold his car and the family’s jewellery to rent a flat in Amstelveen, fifteen miles south of Amsterdam. He joined Jac, to help with the running of his plastics factory.
Lotte wrote:
Holland and it’s people were a haven to me. To walk without being molested, to see rehabilitation centres for German Jews, and even a street collection, remain vivid in my memory. Gradually my father told us some incidents which he experienced in the camp, which I find difficult to relate. I learned Dutch, and accompanied my father to business meetings.
Jac was making plans to emigrate to America, and he persuaded Albert to do the same. The Levy’s got boat tickets for the USA, to sail later that year. In the meantime, Albert took Franze and the girls, to visit Henner and Ruth in South Africa. Lotte wrote:
We arrived in Port Elizabeth. We were all in a bad state psychologically, and needed a holiday badly.
This was a special reunion, the first time in three years that the family were all together. Franze and Albert got to meet their first grandchild, Ruth and Rudi’s baby Marion, born that February.
Rudi foresaw what was to unfold in Europe, and warned the family not to return. They went to Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, to get permission to remain in the country. They were turned down.
Lotte was afraid to return to Holland, because of it’s proximity to Germany. During the visit, she had become friendly with a man. She persuaded Albert to let her stay, and was granted a short visa to remain, on the basis that she was engaged to be married. Lotte wrote:
My family returned to Holland, and we said a casual goodbye, as I was to rejoin them when we went to visit America.
Albert, Franze, Lore and Renata returned to Holland. Before they got to sail to America, war broke out. Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, and then, two days later, the UK and France declared war on Germany, though Holland remained neutral.
Nazi para-troopers dropping into Holland.
However, on the early morning of 10 May 1940, Dutch observers saw bombers from the German Luftwaffe flying in the direction of the North Sea. They assumed they were heading to England. Once over the sea, the planes made a U-turn, and flew back to attack the Netherlands. After heavy casualties from the bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch capitulated on 15 May. Their defeat was hard on the Dutch military and civilians, although many Dutch people were also relieved that the tension had subsided.
Nazi troops on the ground in Holland.
Things were obviously different for the Jewish population, particularly those who had fled Germany. In the months after the invasion, hundreds of Jews committed suicide.
The Germans installed a new administration on 29 May, headed by Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian Nazi. For the next five years, the Germans called the shots in the Netherlands.
The family were trapped. Letters from them, stopped arriving in South Africa. Henner had enlisted in the South African army, which joined the Allies, under Montgomery, in North Africa.
He had to change his official name of Hans to John. Henner had volunteered to be a bombardier, as he had wanted to drop bombs on the Nazis with his own hands. However, they said, if, as a German, he was caught, they’d certainly kill him. So he kept his boots on the ground.
Continuing next week:
the family navigate life under Nazi occupation, while Henner learns how to survive in North Africa.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O