him as he snuggled up next to her, and Stephan liked doing things for his mother that she was unable to do herself.
Three months after Gertrude’s death, her younger brother, Ewald, defaulted on a sizable loan that Arthur, a tobacco merchant with his own shop, had guaranteed, against his wife’s advice. In satisfying the debt, Arthur lost the family’s savings and even their household furniture, which Stephan watched being taken away by movers from his perch on a windowsill.
Arthur could no longer afford the hired woman to care for Stephan while he was at work, and none of Gertrude’s relatives were willing or able to help with the little boy. Arthur’s parents and seven siblings were all dead by 1902, wiped out by some contagion, leaving him the only surviving member of the family at the age of nine. A Jewish organization had brought a frightened Arthur to the Auerbach Orphanage, where he remained until he was eligible to leave at age sixteen. Drafted into the German army in 1914, Arthur saw combat on the western front, including the second Battle of Ypres in Belgium, in which the Germans used mass poison gas attacks for the first time in history, killing thousands.
Stephan Lewy with his mother, Gertrude, shortly before her death in 1931. (Family photograph)
After he was discharged following the armistice, Arthur was invited by an army buddy to a dinner party. There, he sat next to a charming young woman dressed in pale gray chiffon; as Arthur would later tell friends, he fell in love with Gertrude between the soup and the apple strudel. They were married several months later.
While still in her twenties, Gertrude endured a near-fatal bout of rheumatic fever that left her heart damaged. A doctor warned her that the rigors of childbirth would endanger her life, and Gertrude and Arthur agreed not to have children. But within a year she was pregnant. The doctor repeated his dire assessment and offered to terminate the pregnancy.
“I’m going to have this baby,” she told the doctor and her worried husband. “And we’re both going to survive.”
Near the end of her life, Stephan saw his mother growing weaker, but even when she was hospitalized for the last time, he was too young to seriously consider the possibility that she would really die and leave him for good.
He was with his father, packing boxes in the back of the tobacco store, when the hospital telephoned. His father hung up the phone and said heavily, “She’s gone, my son. Your mother is dead.”
They sat down together on a wooden crate and cried. It was the first time that Stephan saw his stern father show any emotion.
“We are all alone now,” Arthur said, weeping. But, he reassured his son, they would be all right, because they had each other.
Then came the loan default, bill collectors, and furniture movers. Arthur lost their two-bedroom apartment in downtown Berlin; he could afford only a sparsely furnished room that came with kitchen privileges and a shared bathroom.
Sitting his son down for a talk, Arthur said in his most serious tone, “Do you remember what I told you about where I grew up?”
Stephan nodded.
“You are a good boy, and I am not doing this to punish you. But for your own good, I have decided to send you to the orphanage.”
“But, Papa, you said we’ll be all right, because we have each other.”
“This is not open for discussion,” said his father. He would not be dissuaded by sentiment or emotion. “I am familiar with the place. I feel sure you will receive proper care and supervision.”
A few days later, Stephan’s father took him to the Auerbach Orphanage. The ornate, three-story structure at Schönhauser Allee 162 was topped with a towering spiral; it had been built in the late 1800s as a beer brewery and still had a dank, dark interior. Stephan waited in a long hallway while his father went into an office.
When his father reappeared, Stephan could tell he wasn’t interested in a prolonged good-bye. He said Sundays were visiting days, bent down for a quick hug, then backed away and shook the boy’s hand.
Stephan, his heart beating rapidly, was left alone in the hallway.
An older boy soon appeared and led him to the boys’ dormitory, where Stephan unpacked his small suitcase. That night, he covered his face with a pillow so no one would hear him cry. When he woke the next morning to a clanging bell, his pillow was damp from tears.
One hundred children lived at the orphanage, all of them Jewish. Most had no parents, though there were some, like Stephan, whose single parents were unable to raise them for various reasons.
During the week, the children attended a public school, but other than that, they stayed at the orphanage. There were many rules, and if they behaved and had local relatives, they could visit them on Sundays, though they had to be back by 6 P.M. Having been raised in a home with a strict father aided Stephan’s adjustment to the authoritarian atmosphere.
Spring 1933 arrived; Hitler rose to power, and the orphanage, like the rest of the country, found itself abuzz with news of all the political happenings and the new anti-Semitic laws. The Nazis were banning Jews from holding public office and closing many professions to them, not only in civil service but in radio, newspapers, teaching, and theater arts.
“Stephan,” one friend said, “there will be nothing left for us when we grow up.”
When he heard about the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, Stephan worried about his father. Would he be able to keep his shop? He knew his father called himself a socialist. Although Stephan didn’t know what that meant—he was still only eight years old—the older boys who read the newspapers told him that socialists were among the people being rounded up by the Nazis.
Seven-year-old Stephan Lewy in the yard of the Baruch Auerbach Jewish Orphanage in Berlin, 1932. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Not long after, Stephan was called to the superintendent’s office. A grim-faced man behind a desk said, “I am sorry to tell you that you will not be allowed to go home for a Sunday visit until further notice.”
“But—what did I do?”
“The request came from your father.”
Stephan left the office weeping and confused. What had he done to make his father not want to see him? First his mother had died, and now this. He was alone in the world with no one who loved him. His wounded feelings soon turned to anger at Arthur, who he believed had completely abandoned him.
Months went by. Stephan heard nothing from or about his father. Then the mother of a friend from the orphanage, who had been bringing Stephan home with her son for Sunday visits, told Stephan the truth. The Nazis had arrested his father and were holding him in a concentration camp. The orphanage officials had tried to protect him from this terrible news, but she believed the boy should know why he was unable to see his father.
Arthur Lewy had been sent to Oranienburg concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis after they came to power. Located in the town of Oranienburg, near Berlin, the camp’s initial purpose was to hold Hitler’s political opponents from the region, and by 1933, it was crowded with Social Democrats,
