on Jewish life in Germany. On 1 April 1933, the boycott of Jewish business, Jewish goods, Jewish doctors and Jewish lawyers began.2 Uniformed Nazis stood guard in front of Jewish shops, department stores and businesses and barred people from entering, sometimes using violence. Jewish shops were daubed with slogans such as ‘Jew!’ or ‘Shopping here can be lethal’.3
As co-owner of an antiques business, Wolfgang’s father Siegmund Wermuth, a German soldier wounded in the First World War, was no longer able to work. He was a member of the Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten [Reich Association of Jewish Veterans] founded shortly after the end of the First World War. In 1925, it had between 35,000 and 40,000 members in 500 local groups. Its main aim was to combat antisemitism in Germany.4
It was quite normal for Jewish soldiers to serve in the German army before the Nazi era. Almost 100,000 Jews had served between 1914 and 1918, some had won medals and over 20,000 had gained promotion. Among them were 3,000 officers. And 12,000 Jewish soldiers had died on the battlefields of the First World War.5 Wolfgang’s father had also been ‘highly decorated’.
For Jürgen Loewenstein, everything changed radically in March 1933. He saw the parades of ‘brown columns’ for the first time. They marched through the streets with torches, shouting and singing. ‘As a youth, I was naturally curious and opened the window.’ Now he could clearly hear what they were singing: ‘The Jews are everywhere, they cross the Red Sea, the waves close on them, and the world has its peace.’ And then they roared: ‘When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, so much the better.’6 He was never able to forget these verses. His grandmother, Agathe Sochaczewer (née Rosenthal), also heard the singing. She pulled him away from the window before the song had finished and said: ‘Jürgen, look carefully at these people: they are your enemies. Never forget that.’
‘That’s when my childhood ended. I was not quite 8 years old.’
The Wermuth family had lots of contacts with non-Jews. Wolfgang’s mother Käthe, an accomplished pianist, was invited by the neighbours to play Christmas carols on the piano. ‘My mother enjoyed these festivities. It had nothing to do with her denying her own religion.’ Such invitations were quite common.
Käthe Wermuth was friends with the wife of a former officer. Their daughter was the same age as Ursula Brigitte, Wolfgang’s sister, who was seven years older than him. In 1935, Käthe received a letter from this woman which said more or less: ‘In my position, I can no longer remain in touch with you. I beg your forgiveness, but the way of the world today also has personal consequences. Please stay away from me in future.’
Wolfgang started school in 1933 at the state primary school on Sybelstrasse. When the family moved first to Bismarckstrasse 66 and then in 1935 to Fritschestrasse 55, both in Charlottenburg, he changed to the state primary school on Witzlebenstrasse. ‘There were seven Jewish children in my class out of twenty-eight pupils. Our class teacher was special. She did not favour us Jewish pupils but she felt a particular sympathy for us.’ The Jewish children had religious instruction twice a week. ‘We were exempt from the Christian class. And even at the state primary school there was a very good religion teacher, Miss Kaspari.’ The Christian fellow pupils were curious and asked questions about the Jewish religion. ‘I remember at Pesach – naturally I ate matzo, unleavened bread − and the children asked me what I was eating. I explained to them as well as I could its origins and the significance of this festival.’
There were very few Jews living in Fritschestrasse. Wolfgang made friends on the street with the neighbourhood children. ‘They came to our apartment. We celebrated birthdays together. I also went to their houses. That was quite normal.’
In 1935, Jürgen was fortunate enough to go on one of the trips to Horserød, Denmark, organized by the Berlin Jewish community. ‘For once I could eat as much as I wanted.’
A year later, he took part in a trip organized by the Reich Association of Jewish Veterans, again to Denmark, during the Olympic Games in Berlin (1 to 16 August 1936). ‘The Nazis toned things down. They wanted to show other countries how wonderful everything was in Germany. The Jewish benches and “no Jews” signs were removed.’
The attempt by Nazi Germany to cover up the antisemitism during the Summer Games from the many visitors, athletes and journalists in Berlin was only partially successful. Antisemitic signs were still to be found, even in the vicinity of the Olympic stadiums.7 In reality there was no interruption to the Nazi terror. Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established just outside Berlin almost at the same time as the Games, and the first fifty inmates were interned there on 12 July 1936. By the end of 1936, it already had 1,600 internees. The camp was to be a model for the large-scale expansion of the concentration camp system by the Nazi regime.8
Or, again, two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games, on 16 July 1936, around 600 Roma and Sinti, including many children, from the Reich capital were put in an internment camp in the Marzahn suburb of Berlin. Almost all of them were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.9
In 1938, Wolfgang’s fellow pupils and neighbourhood children began to call him names (‘Jude – Itzig – Lebertran [cod liver oil]’). ‘I was cut off. When, in my childish innocence, I would go up to these boys, who had been in my house, they turned away. I had no reason not to like them anymore.’
Wolfgang wanted to go to the grammar school. ‘There was no problem with admission.’ But shortly afterwards, his parents received a letter saying that for ‘race reasons’ their son would no longer be accepted at the grammar school. In November 1938, Jewish children were banned from attending state schools.10 Wolfgang was able to attend one of the twenty-four Jewish schools in Berlin,11 at Klopstockstrasse 58 in the Hansaviertel. He later switched to the school in Joachimsthaler Strasse, the headquarters of the Jewish community after the Second World War in the divided Berlin.
A favourite meeting place after school was the Jüdisches Lehrhaus at Marburger Strasse 5 near Bahnhof Zoo. It had a library with books for young people that Wolfgang liked to go to. Apart from reading, the children played table tennis, draughts or chess. ‘There was also a Jewish lunch menu. The owners were called Kugel.’ On the night of the state-organized pogrom on 9–10 November 1938, during which Jewish citizens were arrested and murdered and almost all synagogues in Germany were laid waste and burned to the ground,12 the windows of Pension Kugel were also broken, chairs thrown out onto the street and the library ransacked. At that time, the children in Fritschestrasse began to throw pieces of coal and stones at their former classmate Wolfgang Wermuth. ‘There was one family – the father was some kind of civil servant – with three sons. The youngest, Dieter Neugebauer, still visited me secretly, although his parents had strictly forbidden it. His mother didn’t go into a shop when my mother was in there. She waited outside until my mother left.’ The concierge in the house was quite forthright. He complained about the ‘Jews with their dirty feet’. Close neighbours could be heard making negative comments on the stairs. No one in the street wanted anything more to do with the Wermuths and the other Jews living there. No one wanted to know them or ever to have done so.
On 12 November 1938, Jews were banned from visiting theatres, cinemas, concerts and exhibitions.13 This exclusion from cultural life was a severe blow for the Wermuths. ‘My parents knew a lot of theatre and film people. They were friends with many of the regulars at the Romanisches Café [an artists’ meeting place at Kurfürstendamm 238, now Budapester Strasse 43]. My father even played skat with the film director Ernst Lubitsch when he lived in Berlin.’
In 1938, Siegmund Wermuth had to stop working altogether, and was forced to collect rubbish. He worked occasionally for Siemens as a vacuum cleaner salesman in the outer districts, but in November 1938 this also stopped. Since 1933, the Nazis had tightened the labour market for Jews. They were now classed with ‘asocials’,
