store.
Later, out of sheer curiosity, Werner went downtown to watch a large Nazi rally. At first, he couldn’t see over the crowd—he was a thirteen-year-old boy among adults—but the next thing he knew a helpful bystander had hoisted him up several rungs of a ladder. From his perch, he easily saw to the front of the rally, where uniformed Nazis were waving torches and flags. He heard their amplified voices yelling hateful slogans, each of which was loudly cheered by the enthusiastic crowd.
“A bunch of dirty Jews!”
“Throw them out of our Fatherland!”
“Send them off to Jerusalem, but first cut off their legs so they can’t come back!”
Werner climbed down from the ladder and headed home.
On the first Yom Kippur after the Nazis’ ascent to power, Werner went with his parents to synagogue, which he had attended since age ten. As the worshippers made their way toward the tall, imposing temple, uniformed storm troopers crowded the sidewalks, shouting catcalls and insults as the Jews walked past. Tucked between his mother and father, Werner was frightened not only by the Nazis but by the fear he saw etched on the faces of his parents and the other Jews who walked with them.
At the synagogue, Werner followed his parents to their seats. Soon he would become a bar mitzvah in this same temple, although he had yet to learn the short prayer he had to recite, let alone the passage he was to read in Hebrew from the Torah.
That night, two Nazis sat behind the congregation to monitor the sermon. The young rabbi, Dr. Manfred Swarsensky, spoke explicitly about the political turmoil taking place across Germany. Condemning the outrages being committed daily by the Nazis, he quoted, in conclusion, the New Testament and the dying words of Christ on the crucifix.
“Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Nearly everyone in the congregation was weeping. Werner kept a steady gaze on the rabbi, this holy man who had dared to speak up publicly before the Nazis when so many others remained silent. Werner knew he was hearing something special from a very brave man. He watched to see if the young rabbi was arrested by the two Nazis after his sermon, but to the boy’s relief he wasn’t.
When the 1933–34 school year began, a substitute teacher in Werner’s biology class paused the lesson to advocate for the superiority of an Aryan master race. To demonstrate what he meant, he tried to show how different skull shapes dictated various racial characteristics. At one point, he pointed to Werner, who always sat in front of the class because he was nearsighted and didn’t want to wear glasses.
“This boy has a typical Aryan skull. Just look at its shape. Exactly the same sort of head as Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels.”
Uproarious laughter erupted from the students, who knew that the visiting teacher had picked out the one Jew in the class. Several of the kids came up to Werner after class, not to make fun of him but to ridicule the teacher and the nonsense they were being fed by Nazi teachers.
After Hitler came to power, most Jewish children and teenagers attending German public schools eventually transferred to private Jewish schools. Werner did not. Instead, his education stopped at age sixteen. No one considered Werner too slow witted for higher education, least of all his parents, but he was simply not motivated. He had seldom been challenged; at school, his unimaginative teachers had seemed more concerned with going through the prescribed curriculum than with getting students interested in the material.
Werner told his father he wanted to leave school and learn a trade. Ernst knew that, based on his grades, Werner would not be attending university, and he agreed that there was thus little reason for him to continue in school. He encouraged Werner to look for a field not barred to Jews, which he could enter after he finished the term in spring 1936.
Werner wasn’t interested in working in retail, but he liked animals and hit upon the idea of working at a zoo. Perhaps, he thought, with the optimism characteristic of youth, he might one day lead an expedition to darkest Africa and capture exotic creatures.
Rather than dismiss the idea out of hand, his father helped him write a letter to the director of the Berlin zoo, inquiring about an apprenticeship. The director wrote a polite letter in return, thanking Werner for his interest but pointing out that, under the Nuremberg Laws, he was prohibited from hiring non-Aryans to work at the zoo.
“You see,” said Ernst, “even the chimpanzees are anti-Semitic now.”
One Sunday afternoon, Ernst invited him out on a walk. Werner knew this was how his father liked to have serious talks; out of earshot of the two younger boys—Fritz, thirteen, and Hans, eight—as well as his wife, he could speak more freely.
They strolled down Willdenowstraße, beside the botanical gardens, under old trees, and past the sprawling villa of Reichsminister Walther Darré, a member of Hitler’s cabinet. Black-uniformed SS soldiers stood on guard outside. Other well-known Berlin neighbors were Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who had once lived above a delicatessen on Reichskanzlerplatz, and Hermann Goering, whose old apartment was in a nondescript building on the corner of Kaiserdamm, but none had been as interesting to the neighborhood children as boxer Max Schmeling’s mother, whom Werner once talked into giving him a signed picture of her famous son.
On their walk, in a voice trembling with emotion, Ernst told his son that he could not stay in Germany. The Nazis, he said, had taken away their rights and honor. He was convinced that the younger generation of Jews to which Werner and his brothers belonged no longer had a future there, and must make a life elsewhere. His own generation, his father said, would likely have to stick it out in Germany; resettling at their age and position in life was difficult. He told Werner to keep looking for a trade he wanted to learn, and promised to help him find some practical training, preferably abroad. Werner loved the sound of going “abroad” and looked forward to having an adventure.
Two weeks later, Werner’s father showed him an item in a Jewish newspaper announcing the start of a training farm for prospective Jewish emigrants. Located in western Poland, the farm trained boys and girls over the age of sixteen in agricultural, animal husbandry, and teaching crafts in preparation for emigration to other countries. The sound of working outside and with animals was to Werner’s liking, and he applied. On April 1, 1936, days after finishing the school term, he was called in for an interview with Curt Bondy, the forty-two-year-old psychologist and social educator who headed the program.
The only question Werner would remember from the fifteen-minute interview was Bondy asking him how he felt about being Jewish. Since Werner knew nothing about Bondy’s own position on the subject, he gave a very cautious answer, attesting mainly to attending temple with his parents on holidays. In truth, he had nothing to worry about; Bondy was Jewish, and had been a university teacher until the Nazis fired him in 1933.
A few days later, Werner got a call telling him he had been accepted. The next month, his mother took him to the train station. Their parting was quick and painless, as Werner had been assured he would be able to come home for regular visits. Henny was pleased that her son had the opportunity to learn a trade that would help him emigrate, and Werner was filled with thoughts of forthcoming travel and adventures.
Gross Breesen was a former knight’s manor owned by a Polish Jew who had purchased the property after World War I and was leasing it to Bondy’s group. Upon arrival, Werner found himself in the middle of rolling hills, surrounded by groves of fruit trees and cultivated fields. A large manor stood apart from the livestock barns. The setting looked ideal to Werner; here, he could learn farming and work with animals. He joined more than fifty boys and girls, nearly all of them
