Episode 10
The family sent Henner across the world. He had flouted Hitler’s Race Laws many a time, and the move likely prevented his future imprisonment. Rudi, his sister’s fiancé, was his travel companion. In Henner’s own words:
“We arrived in Cape Town. I was very impressed - it was fantastic to look at. It was winter- it was July.
We were put up by relatives, who had already lived there for a couple of years. We were in a boarding house in Sea Point - populated by Jewish immigrants. We went down to the room where people were sitting - and children with a nanny. The nanny was very pretty, so I put myself down on the floor, and played with the children. Then she said she had to take the children for a walk. I said:
‘I’ll come and accompany you.’
Everybody looked at me.
When we came back, my cousin took me to one side, and he turned white. He said:
‘How can you go out with a coloured girl?’
I said: ‘What’s a coloured girl?’
He said: ‘She’s mixed race’.
She looked to me like she had a sun tan. I couldn’t care less. She was a nice girl. I’d wondered - I’d asked her if she would like to go to the cinema. She said:
‘No, I’m not allowed to.’
I thought maybe her parents were strict and wouldn’t allow her to. What a load of nonsense!
Then we thought we’re not that fond of Cape Town. We went by train to Johannesburg - which was three times bigger and ugly. We didn’t stay there long, because we didn’t like it. People warned us off Durban, because it was so hot. So it was only Port Elizabeth left.
So we went to Port Elizabeth, and took the 2pm train, and it arrived at 6pm in the evening. And when it was 5.30pm, we took our luggage down. The conductor said:
‘What are you doing with your luggage?’
We said that we would be in PE in half an hour.
‘Ach, man,’ he said, ‘tomorrow. That’s tomorrow evening.’
We didn’t know about distances. So little we knew about South Africa.
We both loved PE as soon as we got there. It reminded me of Altenburg. It was smallish. It was bigger than Altenburg, but it was hilly like Altenburg. You had to walk up hill, when you walked around. And people were terribly friendly.
Then we went through all sorts of oddities - not knowing how people lived, the time keeping, and all things like that. For instance, a doctor who lived in Mill Park, asked us to come after dinner, for a drink. So we worked out, Rudi and myself, that we ate at 9 pm, so we’d go at 9.30pm. We got there at 9.30 pm, and rang the bell, and there he arrived in pyjamas, he had gone to bed. How were we to know.
The second one (faux pas) - we were asked to a party with another young German, who worked at the bazaar. We didn’t know what a party meant there, at that stage. They lived in Swartzkopf, an area with wooden houses, with stoops in front. Rudi had bought a car for £15 - a black Porsche - an open car, where you had to hold the doors, when you drove.
So we thought a party, we better be decently dressed. So we arrived there, honest to G- d, one in a black dinner jacket, one in tails, and I had a white dinner jacket, from the boat journey.
We arrived there and the parents were sitting on the stoop in vests. They spotted me and said:
‘They brought a waiter with them!’
So we didn’t stay long, and drove back home in all our finery!”
Home was a rented flat, with little furniture. Henner opened a women’s fashion store in the centre of PE, called the Continental. There was nowhere to buy stock in South Africa, so he went back to Germany, to his suppliers from Berlin. He said it took three weeks by boat. By the sounds of it, those aboard did not hold back on the party front.
Henner, in the back, centre right, with too much sun and a bow tie.
Meanwhile back in Altenburg, the Nazis spent a long time in the Levy’s and Bucky’s apartments, cataloguing and numbering all their possessions. Everything got marked. Most items weren’t allowed to be removed from Germany. A few could be taken, such as china. Here are a couple of matching plates, which I use today. Both have the same number painted on the back, painted on by the Nazis.
The regime meticulously recorded everything, both at this stage, and later. It seems crazy for a State to be so thorough in recording it’s theft of people’s possessions, and later it’s acts of mass murder. They did so because they thought their actions were for the greater good.
Henner noted:
“ Hitler was a pathetic man. A very unhappy man. A bastard of the very first order. He was very un-German in his demeanour, and spoke awful German. He screamed, he didn’t speak. As I always say, I was German before Hitler was. He was naturalised German, when I was fifteen years old.
The first year I was in South Africa, I cried my eyes out, protesting that I was German.
And then after a year in PE, I became South African.
I was twenty one when I left - I missed out on a lot of young time. I became an old man at twenty one.”
Continued……
Next week, in Altenburg, Franze’s correspondence is seized by the Gestapo.