May all that is good stand out and shine in 2022. Happy New Year 🌟
Episode 7
“The first part of my childhood was blissfully happy,” Lotte said. Lotte is the first girl from the left, sitting next to her brother Henner. Looking older than her twelve years here, I sense she already knows she is a beauty.
The Levy girls are holding a party in 1932. As the only Jewish girls at their school, their friends are from local Christian families. One of them, Barbara, is the first girl in checks on the right. This photo came from her, in 2008, after my first visit to Altenburg.
Barbara adored Lore, Lotte’s twin, here sat in front of her, on the floor in white. Barbara told me she had been an unhappy child, but Lore offered much comfort. Their mothers were friends, so she visited the Levy household often.
(The oldest Levy girl, Ruth, stands the furthest on the right, and the baby of the family, Renata, is first on the left, in the back row).
Lotte wrote:
This happy life changed rapidly when Hitler came to power. (At school) the importance of the Aryan race became a daily subject.
Hitler did not waste much time in his campaign against German Jews. He decreed a nationwide, planned action to boycott Jewish businesses, and professionals, on April 1, 1933. The boycott aimed to intimidate Germany’s Jews, and discourage the public from shopping at Jewish businesses.
On that Saturday morning in 1933, Albert set off to M&S Cohn’s, on foot as usual, with his son Henner. It would take more than a Nazi decree to intimidate this war hero. However, Albert ensured that Herr Ula brought the car to the Store on that morning.
As father and son arrived at the Store, customers were waiting for the store to open.
Albert went upstairs to his office, as he did every day, six days a week, while Henner stayed downstairs on the shop floor.
“People kept arriving,” my father Henner told me
“Soon, there were so many people in the Store, you could hardly move. They even crammed in, up the staircase, and on the upper and ground floors, until there was no more room, and people spilled out into the street.”
When my father recounted this day, I could sense the atmosphere of a place buzzing with conversation, cries of support, as the whole place got hotter and stuffier by the minute. What I failed to realise, was just how many people couldn’t fit into the shop. The street outside was also jammed full.
M&S Cohn’s and Sporen Strasse, 1/04/1933
The local paper, Altenburger Zeitung fuer Stadt und Land reported the event on Monday, April 3rd 1933:
……Just before 10am, a few police officers arrived who tried to clear people from the pavement in front of the Store Cohn. The crowd, however, stayed. At 10am, an SA group of the National Socialist Party, some wearing steel helmets, marched from Burg Strasse into Sporen Strasse, with the crowd booing and shouting ‘freedom’.
The article describes how the stormtroopers tried to clear people from the front of the Store, but failed. Scuffles broke out, in which one of the SA got wounded. After a period of calm:
Several people were seized from the street, and their details taken.
A young girl, there with her mother, said even though the SA were photographing and taking people’s details, it did not deter them. As neighbours to the family, they knew them personally and wanted to show their support. That is why thousands turned up that day, she added.
Given that the SA, also called stormtroopers, were specially trained and known to be murderous, these citizens were exceptionally brave. I suspect, rather than know, that some would have been severely punished for this action, to deter others from acting similarly, in the future.
Outside the Store on 1/04/1933 where one of the SA’s steel helmet is visible
Inside the Store, Albert decided it was time to go. He left his office to get word downstairs to his son, to get Ula to fetch the car. Herr Ula left through the back door into Hinton der Weg, the lane behind the Store.
Albert pushed his way through the crowds on the stairs, making his way to the back door with his son. As they stepped out into the lane, a line of stormtroopers walked towards them. They had positioned themselves across the width of the lane, blocking the route to Ula, and the car.
Without hesitating, Albert raised his arm, pointed at Ula, and shouted:
“You! Get yourself over here! Now!”
Herr Ula edged the car towards Albert, and the stormtroopers moved to the side of the lane, letting the car through. Albert and Henner climbed inside, and they made their way home.
My father said that Albert understood how obedient Germans were to authority. And maybe especially this section in uniform, who had been trained to do nothing but follow orders.
Henner did think, though, that this was the day when his and his father’s time should have been up. I wondered whether there had been moments in the coming years, when he had wished that this had been their last day. An exit on home turf, that would have spared him the extraordinary challenges that lay ahead.
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……. to be continued
In the next episode, the girls’ school life becomes ruled by Nazi dictate, and Henner is uprooted…