This applied at first to Jews who had been forced into unemployment and then, from mid-1940, to all Jews up to a certain age.14
Siegmund Wermuth found it ‘very decent’ to be given a large radio as a retrospective Christmas bonus from Siemens:
For a long time, my father thought he was safe. He was a decorated First World War veteran. The Jews had risked their lives and spilled their blood for this country. Didn’t that count for anything anymore? My father thought that they might strip the Jews of their citizenship and make them stateless, but he still didn’t feel directly affected by much of what was going on. It was as if the neighbour’s house was burning but my house wouldn’t necessarily catch fire as a result. That’s how a lot of people felt until they were up to their necks in water.
Wolfgang’s parents were simply unable to believe what was happening around them. They accepted a lot, thinking that it couldn’t go any further. They no longer recognized people they thought they knew. Their world collapsed around them. Literally everything slid out of control. But they still hoped that it would all pass.
In early December 1938, the Jews were banned from using certain streets and squares. The term ‘Judenbann’ [ban on Jews] was coined for that purpose.15 The lives of the Wermuth and Loewenstein families were almost completely confined to their own four walls.
Of course, Jewish families – including the Loewensteins and Wermuths − in Berlin and Germany considered emigrating. But the Loewensteins didn’t have enough money. Wolfgang Wermuth now had contact only with Jewish children. In his family as well, emigration became the main topic of conversation. ‘Should we go? If so, where to? What about visas?’ It all happened very quickly. ‘Suddenly there were only sixteen children left of the original thirty or so pupils.’ This made those left behind uncertain and worried. They envied the émigrés. ‘At home I was consoled by being told that emigration was highly uncertain and that perhaps it would get better.’ Some of the Wermuths’ relatives and their families had also fled abroad.
The Sochaczewer and Loewenstein families wanted at least to get Jürgen out of Nazi Germany. He was sent to a ‘hakhshara’, an agricultural school, in preparation for emigration to Palestine.16
On 1 September 1939, Jürgen was standing on the platform at the train station in Sommerfeld (Niederlausitz) waiting for a narrow-gauge train to take him to nearby Schniebinchen. He was carrying his meagre possessions in a cardboard box tied up with string.
‘Hey, kid, where are you going?’ a man asked him.
‘Schniebinchen.’
‘Aha, you want to go to Palestine. That’s where you should all go.’
Jürgen was happy to get out of Berlin. He wanted to ‘start something new, to begin working and carry on learning’. And ‘perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to get away from Germany’.
The emigration centre was on a hill not far from the village of Schniebinchen. There were around 150 children and adolescents aged 14 and over living in three houses. Half of the day was filled with agricultural training. In the other half, they spoke about Zionism, the labour movement, kibbutzim and Palestine studies, did theatre work and played music, read German literature and had to help in the kitchen. ‘Schniebinchen was isolated and we didn’t get much news from outside. Everyone was waiting and hoping to make Aliyah, immigration to Palestine.’
Jürgen enjoyed the work and he learned a lot about things he had never previously heard of: ‘Zionism, the labour movement, kibbutzim and equality, the history of the Jewish people and of Eretz Israel [the birthplace and refuge of the Jewish people]. But we also learned a bit about Hasidism (“The entire life of the Hasid down to the smallest detail is devoted to the service of God.”)17 and German literature.… In the evening, there were theatre and music courses.’18 But one day Jürgen received a cruel surprise. The director informed him: ‘There’s no place for you here. You’re not suited for community life.’ For Jürgen, this decision was completely incomprehensible. But tears and shouting were of no use.
In 1933, there were 160,000 Jews living in Berlin.19 By September 1939, forced emigration, flight and death, deportation and murder had reduced the number to just around 75,000.20
The Jewish school in Joachimsthaler Strasse was forced to close. Wolfgang started at the Jewish secondary school at Wilsnacker Strasse 3 in 1940. He tried very hard and was eager to learn. The big question loomed permanently in the background: when would he be able to use what he had learned? ‘This question overshadowed everything.’
After Jürgen was unable to continue the agricultural training in Schniebinchen, he had a stroke of luck. At the time of his rejection, the hakhshara teacher Therese Hemmerdinger was visiting Schniebinchen from Rüdnitz and offered to accept the boy in her group.
A small group of Jewish girls and boys lived in Rüdnitz near Bernau. They were convinced that they would one day go to Eretz Israel. The work in the vegetable garden was not difficult and produced additional food. Friendships were formed and future plans hatched. We forgot what was going on in the world. The horrors of war were far away.
The first news of deportations to the East reached Rüdnitz. ‘Some fellow students whose parents were on the list didn’t know what to do: to go back to their families or to remain in the hakhshara. It was decided that we should all stay together.’
During this time, Wolfgang Wermuth was able to finish his schooling in Berlin at the Jewish secondary school in Wilsnacker Strasse in April 1941.
Then came the ‘big bang’ for him: he was recruited immediately with around 19,000 Jewish women and men from Berlin in the middle of the year for essential war production.21 It was claimed that, without the forced labour, the economy and the conduct of the war in Nazi Germany would have collapsed at the latest by early 1942.22
Wolfgang was 14 years old. He was assigned to the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken in Berlin-Borsigwalde for an hourly wage of 27 pfennig. Work started at 6 a.m. ‘I rode the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse, changed trains and had then to walk for 20 to 25 minutes.’ They worked separately from the non-Jewish employees in ‘large, locked, cage-like things’. They had to wear a blue armband with a red dot on it and were only allowed to go to the toilet in groups of ten.
Wolfgang checked bullets for cracks. ‘We deliberately allowed lots of small defects to pass. We knew quite well who the ammunition was intended for. The inspection could not always be precisely traced, but we could not commit real acts of sabotage.’ But it was still risky to allow defects to pass. Anyone caught doing so was likely to be deported immediately. The Jewish forced labourers had occasional contact with the non-Jewish workers. There were a few young women who secretly gave them sandwiches wrapped in newspaper. ‘We had limited rations and ration cards.’
One day, Wolfgang got a splinter of metal in his eye. ‘My father applied for me to be taken off the factory work.’ He now worked in a small typewriter factory near the Landwehrkanal, ‘where the conditions were quite decent’. Wolfgang was on the late shift from 2 to 11 p.m. ‘There were more and more air raid warnings and actual air raids.’
The Jews were not allowed to eat in the factory canteen, which was reserved for ‘Germans’. There was thus very little contact. Wolfgang recalls a young woman in the pay department who was always nice to him. Once she gave him a bottle of lemonade she had hidden behind a brick. He secretly returned the empty deposit bottle to her. He travelled by S-Bahn to work and his ticket was only valid for that journey. ‘There would be problems if I took another route, and there were lots of controls.’
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