locked inside the synagogue for the rest of the day, until a concerned neighborhood policeman came by and let them out.
Two days later, the orphans were directed by staff members to return to school. Those orphanage staff members who had been released from custody seemed eager to bring some normalcy back to the children’s lives. “Pick up your lunches and go to school,” they told the orphans. “Life goes on.”
The sights Stephan saw on that two-mile walk would stay with him for the rest of his life. Buildings were burnt shells; stores had been looted; Torah scrolls and prayer shawls lay crumpled in the streets. Armed Nazis patrolled corners and rooftops. Jewish men, forced to sweep up in front of their destroyed stores and homes, were beaten and jeered as they worked.
Shortly after Stephan and the other boys from the orphanage reached the school and took their seats in their classroom, a uniformed Nazi came into the room to lecture the children about the “mixing of our pure Aryan race.” He announced that Jewish children could no longer attend “Aryan state” elementary schools. “You have to leave this school now,” he said.
Puzzled but not daring to ask questions, Stephan and the other Jewish students quietly collected their things and left. Back at the orphanage, the administrators had also just been informed of this new policy. A building on Kaiserstrasse—about a forty-minute walk from the orphanage through downtown Berlin—was soon designated as an all-Jewish school.
By then, the children were all well aware that anti-Semitism surrounded them any time they ventured outside. There was no escaping it in Germany’s capital city and no way to prevent the inevitable: it followed them to their new school. On most afternoons, the students were confronted by uniformed Hitler Youth, lined up in rows on either side of the sidewalk for about one hundred feet. Swinging their leather belts overhead, they whipped the students—who were forced to run the gauntlet—with the buckle ends like cattle. Policemen stood by and watched, but did nothing other than stop the Jews from trying to defend themselves.
Thirteen-year-old Stephan understood that his life had changed. This realization was confirmed when he went home the following Sunday and told his father about the night of horror at the orphanage and about the other appalling things he had seen. It wasn’t only happening in Berlin, his father told him in hushed, tense whispers, but all across Germany. Although Jewish newspapers and magazines had been ordered to cease publication, he had heard that hundreds of synagogues had been destroyed. Thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
Two Gestapo agents had come to pick him up the other night, Arthur said, when he was out taking tobacco orders from his customers. Jewish men were being arrested in their own homes for no reason, he explained; the Nazis would show up late at night, when they thought people would be in bed. When they came for Arthur, Johanna told the men she didn’t know when he would be back. They waited for an hour before leaving. When would they return? Afraid even to be home, Arthur had begun leaving in the early evening and walking the streets most of the night. He and Johanna had worked out a signal. If men were waiting, she would place the parakeet’s cage in the window, and Arthur would keep walking. If he didn’t see the cage, it was safe to come up.
They had decided it was time to get out of Germany, he told his son. Johanna had a distant cousin living in Boston. Though they had never met, she had written him to see if he would be able to sponsor the three of them for entry into America. Stephan’s father explained that they would be submitting visa applications to the U.S. State Department. It was still possible for Jews to leave Germany as long as they didn’t take any money or other assets. But the emigration doors could slam shut at any time; America’s policy could change as well. Adding to these uncertainties, the German government had recently started civilian rationing of meat, coffee, and butter. Arthur took that as a sign that all-out war was imminent. If they didn’t leave soon, he feared that they might never be able to get out.
Part of the visa process involved an appointment at the U.S. consulate for medical exams to ensure the applicants were not carriers of infectious diseases and were otherwise in good health. Johanna and Stephan passed, but Arthur was notified that he had failed because of his high blood pressure. He would go on medication, change his diet, and try again to pass the exam, but it would take time.
Arthur and Johanna broke the news to Stephan during his next Sunday visit. Though he was disappointed to hear that they would not be leaving Germany any time soon, the thought that they would not all be together made Stephan feel even worse. He had thought a lot about what it would be like to be part of a family again, to live at home with parents instead of at the orphanage. Emigration to the United States had offered more than safety—it was a chance to again live under the same roof with his parents at long last.
“You know how concerned we are for your safety?” asked Johanna.
Yes, Stephan did know.
It had become increasingly dangerous for Jews to remain in Germany, Arthur said. He and Johanna had decided to send Stephan out of the country ahead of them. “We are taking advantage of a plan offered through the orphanage,” he said.
“What kind of plan?” Stephan asked.
His father explained that European countries like England, Denmark, Holland, and France were admitting unaccompanied Jewish children as refugees. He had learned from Auerbach administrators of arrangements they were making to send some children to Paris, where they would be cared for by a Jewish rescue organization. He had already signed Stephan up. It would be safer for him in France, said his father.
“Leave Germany without you?”
Stephan realized his dream of reuniting with his parents was lost.
His father promised that they would join him as soon as possible in France—or possibly in America. “We’ll see. We will write each other.”
On July 4, 1939, Arthur and Johanna took Stephan to Berlin’s cavernous Anhalter Bahnhof railroad station. There, they found a group of about forty boys and their chaperons off in one corner. Stephan knew about a dozen of the children from the orphanage. As relatives said their good-byes, many of the younger boys were laughing, joking with each other about the great adventure they would soon embark on. Aware of the trip’s implications, Stephan stayed silent.
None of the adults present, including Arthur and Johanna, revealed to their children any foreboding that they might not ever see each other again. Of course, as the situation in Germany worsened daily, the grown-ups knew this was a possibility. Arthur had had to sign a conservatorship document assigning the legal responsibility for Stephan’s welfare to the rescue organization until he was eighteen. Even without parental permission, the organization would be free to take Stephan to wherever they felt he would be safe.
As the group moved toward the train platform, Stephan heard his father calling out to him: “Be sure to behave.”
Stephan went back to the last car as the train pulled out of the station, and looked out a frost-covered window at Berlin, fading into the distance behind him. With his finger, he drew three X’s in the condensation on the pane. The triple X was a well-known German sign of displeasure. It would be left, for instance, by a customer on the check at a restaurant after a bad meal, signifying that he would not come back.
Stephan was a German, but he was also a Jew. And after what he had already lived through in his young life, he never wanted to return to Germany.
