Episode 2
Two days after Albert’s arrest, Lore heard they were moving the men. The police refused to tell her where they were taking them. Lore decided to go to the State police office in Weimar, hoping for information.
Lore
Weimar - a place steeped in history: where Germany’s first democratic constitution was signed after WW1; the name of Germany’s Republic until the start of Nazi rule in 1933; the focal point of the German Enlightenment; the home to Goethe and Schiller and between the wars, the hub of the artistic Bauhaus movement.
The route from Altenburg to Weimar was straight forward.
However leaving town, Lore had to be careful to stay out of sight in the van. Herr Ula wasn’t Jewish so it was illegal for them to be together. This was a small town where the family were known. 18 year old Lore stayed on the floor of the van as they left the area.
After a while on the road, the van started to gain ground on a bus ahead. Suddenly something caught Ula’s eye.
‘Lore, quick, look,’ he said.
Lore scrambled onto the front seat.
‘See there,’ Ula pointed to the bus in front, ‘that’s Albert’s coat’.
They had found her father. They followed the bus.
It’s destination was Buchenwald.
Subscribe to get the next part free by email
Buchenwald was a concentration camp set up by the Nazis in 1937, on Ettersberg Hill, 6 miles from the centre of Weimar. Researcher James E Young suggests the Nazis chose this site became of it’s strong association with Goethe, in order to erase it’s cultural significance.
The Nazis used the camp mostly for their political opponents.
Lore was determined to take her father home. The family recently received entry visas for Holland. Their cousin Jac had put a lot of pressure on the Dutch authorities to process the papers. They had only just come through.
The bus entered the camp, Lore got out of the van, armed with the visas.
Entrance to Buchenwald camp
‘Please may I speak to someone in charge,’ Lore asked. ‘I have come for my father.’ Lore was taken into an office near the gate. Whether she spoke to the Camp Commandant Karl Otto Koch or one of his officers I don’t know. She explained that the family were emigrating to Holland so they needed to release Albert. The answer was that Albert would be released in exchange for their home. It had to be signed over to the Third Reich. In addition Albert had to leave Germany immediately.
Lore returned to Altenburg desperate to organise the documents. The house deeds needed preparing, a fleeing tax paid, an additional tax settled and a compensation payment made (the Jews had to pay for the damage done during the Night of Broken Glass). She had her elderly grandparents, Marianne and Sally Bucky to help with the paperwork.
The family house was divided into two apartments and Marianne and Sally, lived on the upper floor. Even though Marianne was nearly blind, she was as sharp as ever.
Marianne and Sally Bucky
Subscribe to get the next part free by email
The official documents were ready and on November 17th, the police state office in Weimar agreed Albert’s release. The following day, Herr Ula drove Lore and her twin Lotte to the camp, to collect Albert.
Lore (right) and twin Lotte circa 1925
Lotte described the first sight of her father on his release from the camp as one of the most shocking moments of her life. She wrote:
We stood joined in our disbelief at (his) transformation…..As my father went in the camp he came out ( in the same night wear and coat). He was hungry, dirty, unwashed, screaming and screaming. We brought him home, we washed him, and he virtually threw himself on the food, he was so hungry. We put him to bed, but Lore and I had to take turns to look after him at night. He never told us anything (about the camp), but he relived it in his nightmares.
The girls’ strong father had returned a broken man.
On leaving the camp, Albert had to sign a declaration saying he wouldn’t reveal anything about his stay there. I am not aware that he ever spoke about those days.
Ten days later, the family left their home. Lore, Lotte, their younger sister Renata, an almost blind grandmother, their grandfather and a father still very much not himself. They took a train to the Dutch border.
Lotte wrote that it was hard to placate their father on the train. He was desperate to be out of Germany. He had loud outbursts convinced the train was going in the wrong direction. Just before the train arrived at the border, members of the SA took the last of the family’s money.
They got off the train penniless.
…. to be continued
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O
Subscribe to get the next part free by email
The Nazi Party's paramilitary organisation were the Sturm Abeilung, and commonly known as the SA.
Notes on Buchenwald
My favourite piece of information about the camp: The front gate was designed by one of it’s prisoners Franz Ehrlich, a Bauhaus architect. Bauhaus was rejected by the Nazis as degenerate art. They didn’t realise that he used Bauhaus typeface on their main entrance. (See below).
The Nazi motto ‘Jeden das Seine’ (to each his own) was engraved on the front gate. They used this to support ‘their right’ as ‘the master race’ to humiliate and destroy others.
Today the site is a memorial which preserves the gatehouse, detention cells, watch towers, the disinfection centre, graveyard and quarry.
This was not an extermination camp. The prisoners were seen more useful alive. The land was rich in clay. Inmates were used to dig clay for the manufacture of bricks. Despite this 56,000 prisoners died.
Get next part free by email
References
‘Die Jude in Altenburg’ Ingolf Strassman (2004) Verlag Beier & Beran
‘Im Altenburger Land zwischen 1933 und 1945’ Guenther Hauthal (2005)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_concentration_camp