🌿14. War
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I sat down to write this episode on Thursday morning and titled it War. When I took a break, I saw the news that Russia was bombing Ukraine. This was always going to be the hardest episode to write, but I was somewhat taken aback by the shadow of the news.
Chapter 14
With the outbreak of WW2, Henner joined the Allies in North Africa. He had to change his name from Hans to John, in case of capture by the Germans, which would mean certain death as a traitor. What an irony, because as a Jew, the Germans had removed his citizenship.
In North Africa, the lack of water was a continual problem. The army had plenty of tinned food though, so the soldiers punched holes in the cans of fruit, just to drink the juice. They also took the water out of their truck engines, to use for washing, and then poured it back in, after they were finished. In later years, Henner said his army experience meant that, each night when he got into a hot bath, it felt like the height of luxury.
Henner in the army in North Africa
The outbreak of war stopped communication between the family in South Africa with those in Holland. Letters from Franze no longer got through to her children. It’s hard to know how much news from Europe, reached Port Elizabeth.
The family trapped in Holland, continued life, as best as possible. Albert’s business partner, unlike the Levy’s, managed to get out of Holland, and enter America before the declaration of war. Albert continued to manufacture goods, with a new partner, producing a range of synthetic materials. Lore returned to nursing, and Renata became a nursery nurse.
Renata with Franze and Albert
In July 1940, Marianne’s husband Sally, passed away. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam.
Marianne and Sally
The Dutch Queen and government had fled to England, leaving an entire administration in place. A civil occupying regime was imposed, influenced by fanatical Nazis, who considered the Dutch to be a “Germanic brother nation.” They tried to win people over to Nazism. The administration had detailed records of both the Dutch Jews, and the German Jewish refugees, which they shared with the Nazis. Through this, the Germans knew exactly how many Jews there were, and where they could be found. From January 1942, the authorities ordered Jews to move to Amsterdam.
That year the Levy’s moved into a house at Molenbeekstraat 1, in the city, with members of Albert’s extended family. Franze’s mother Marianne joined them a couple of months later.
That was also the year that the Jews in Holland had to wear the Judenstern, the Nazis identity badge for them, the yellow star.
In 1942 in Germany, high level Nazi officials met with those from governments in Nazi controlled Europe, at the Wannsee Conference, in the Berlin suburbs. The previous year, Hitler had decided on a policy of mass extermination of European Jewry. The SS found that killing by gunfire was inefficient, and took it’s toll on the soldiers. As a result, Hitler shifted to organized, systematic murder, on an industrial scale.
The methods and knowledge gained during the Euthanasia Program, served as the basis for the“Final Solution” of the Jews. The Germans had already used gas, to murder tens of thousands of disabled citizens.
Already by the summer of 1941, Rudolf Hoess, commander of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, had received orders to explore new methods of mass murder using poison gas.
His first experiment with mass murder by gas was performed in Auschwitz in September 1941, with Soviet prisoners of war.
The SS envisioned that 11 million Jews, some not living in German-controlled territory, would be eradicated in their program. Heydrich, the man in charge of organising the the policy, included in the total, the Jewish populations of the UK, as well as the neutral European nations like Switzerland.
The Nazis in Holland used Westerbork, south of Assen, as a holding place, before transport to the extermination camps. Marianne, now blind, was the first of the family to be taken to Westerbork, just after her seventy-sixth birthday. In 1943, she was deported to the extermination camp of Sobibor, where her death was recorded on the day of arrival.
A few months later, Albert, Franze, Lore and Renata were deported to Westerbork, along with members of the extended family. They were transported to Auschwitz on September 7th. Three days later they got out of the cattle trucks onto the infamous Judenrampe, the selection ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenhead, where Dr Mengele and his associates decided who might be useful and live. They sent these one way. Those who were to be killed immediately, were sent the other way. At the sorting point, Albert and Franze were divided from their girls. According to a cousin with them, Lore fought the Nazis, refusing to be removed from her mother. She insisted she needed her. Lore was forced in the opposite direction away from her.
Lore
Albert and Franze were killed the day they arrived, September 10th 1943. Lore and Renata were killed two months later on November 30th.
Henner spent the whole war fighting in North Africa. After it ended, he managed to secure a boat passage to Holland in 1946. A cousin who had survived, told him the story of the family’s arrival at Auschwitz. He took Henner to a room where Albert had left some possessions, including his father’s basket of religious items, together with a scroll.
Henner went to the authorities for information about the family. There were queues and queues of destitute people at Holland’s official buildings.
By the end of the war, the Nazis had killed 75% of Holland's Jews. They deported 107,000 Jews out of Holland, and 5000 survived. 30,000 managed to survive, mainly by going into hiding.
Henner posted an obituary for his parents, sisters and grandmother in Altenburg’s local newspaper.
I am not sure if he had the full details or whether he needed to think they were all together. I know the thought of Lore and Renata in the camp, troubled him greatly.
To be continued next week: Henner contacts the authorities in Altenburg, and makes a clandestine visit.
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