Berlin 1949
The Russian zone stretches from central Germany to the Russian and Polish frontiers in the east, and contains the cities of Erfurt, Magdeburg and Leipzig[1]. In this large region, which covers almost half of Germany, there is Berlin, but its situation is different: it is not subject to the Russian regime but to all four occupying forces.
Going to the city by plane is no problem and no special permission is needed from anyone. It is more difficult to go by train, as it runs through the Russian zone for about 170 kilometres or more. I was not bothered by these limitations, my journey was ‘sponsored by the Foreign Office’ and I travelled in the train of the CCG (Control Commission Germany). From Hamburg we went first to Hannover. This is a long detour but the train runs from the west and not from Hamburg. From Hannover I travelled in the sleeping car. Obviously the trains of the CCG run through the Russian zone only at night. There is a notice saying that the windows must be closed and the curtains drawn. So you don’t see anything of the area, not even a night-time view. At one station the train stopped for over an hour. This was in Helmstedt, a place often mentioned during the time of the Berlin blockade, the place where the airlift had started. I arrived at the Zoologischer Garten [Zoo] station on the morning of 24 October. The first thing I heard when I stepped onto the street was one man asking another, ‘Hast du Alexen gesehen?’[2] I was back home.
The destruction of Berlin is terrible, really beyond description, worse than in any other town I have seen during this journey. No part has been spared, every one has suffered. The Reichstag [Parliament building][3] is burnt out, large parts of the walls are destroyed. The same is true of the Fasanenstrasse synagogue. Both buildings had been burnt down by the Germans long before the war and are now monuments which bear witness to the fact that it was the Germans and not the enemy who started the destruction.
If the two buildings had still been standing perhaps Berlin, Germany and the world would have been spared all the other destruction. The Germans’ complaints about what happened to them and what the war had done to them are put into perspective by these two buildings.
It is very difficult to point to certain parts of Berlin as more heavily destroyed than the rest, because everywhere there is terrible destruction. The Tiergarten[4] is a wasteland, partly overgrown by weeds; there are still some trees left, and some parts have been made into allotments. The Siegesallee conveys a tragicomic impression. Large parts of the once splendid Unter den Linden have been destroyed and knocked down. The Unter den Linden/Friedrichstrasse intersection, once a focus of traffic unparalleled in the world, now looks like a track across fields, but without any fields. The houses in both streets are completely demolished and so nothing on one side faces nothing on the other. In the Wilhelmstrasse the Reichskanzlei[5] has disappeared. The last fighting took place here, and afterwards the Russians cleared away the whole huge building. Today it is waste ground, with one lonely stump sticking up into the air, a remnant of Hitler’s huge bunker where he committed suicide. All over the city you are reminded of the splendour which once existed, now gone. In front of the sad remains of a house you learn that Rudolf Mosse had lived there, and in front of the even bigger ruins of the neighbouring house that Aloys Petschek had lived there. Behind these remains some ruins protrude and you are informed that Keitel[6] lived there. His niece had married a Jew. I was told that she had insisted on bringing up her children as Jews during the Third Reich, and her husband is now the Parnos [Head of Community] of the Jewish Community in Frankfurt am Main. On the Alexanderplatz I tried to find the house in which my parents had lived for years, 49 Alexanderstrasse. It has disappeared and all the houses in the neighbourhood with it; the large square is an empty desert.
Not only is the destruction in Berlin more widespread, it is also more thorough. The other towns I visited were only attacked by enemy bombers, but in Berlin there was also close combat with tanks and artillery. The rubble has been cleared away in many places, but in others the ruins remain and are a danger to traffic. There are still ruins waiting to be blown up. Then the police block off a wide area, passers-by have to wait around the next corner, then there is an explosion followed by the loud thunder of the collapsing building, a cloud of dust rises high into the sky, and a group of workers appear to clear away the rubble.
Reconstruction in Berlin is much slower than in other places. The Berliners tell stories of the Blockade which lasted almost a year, during which time they were lacking the bare necessities of life. Only then and there do you fully understand the importance of the air lift, the ‘air bridge’ as it is called in Berlin. The Allies used three airfields when supplying the city by air. I visited the southernmost one, Tempelhof, the Americans’ airfield. Its vast area is filled with hangars, hangar after hangar. During the blockade a plane arrived every three minutes. It touched down, the pilot was able to have a rest and something to eat in the nearby barracks while the plane was unloaded and made ready to take off again. Within a very short time it was flying west again to bring the next delivery to Berlin. The same thing happened at the British airfield, in Gatow near Potsdam, and at the northern airfield – I think it was Tegel. That’s when you come to understand what ‘Cold War’ means, and how great the victory was that the English and Americans won over the Russians, though suffering heavy losses. And yet, whatever was achieved Berlin could only be provided with the barest necessities. This lack of everything has lasted and is one reason why rebuilding Berlin takes so very long.
There are also other factors which produce the same effect: the division of Germany into zones, the blockade between East and West which cuts Berlin off from West Germany without which the city cannot survive and the fact that Berlin itself is chopped into sectors. There are four. They are, from south to north, the American, the British and the French sectors. In the east all three border on the Russian sector. You must not confuse them with the zones, they have nothing whatsoever to do with them. It is difficult to get into the Russian zone and perhaps even more difficult to leave it again, but you can enter the Russian sector and leave it again without any problems[7]. It is very different in the zones. On 12 October I went to a conference in Harzburg. Not far to the east of there is the Russian zone. Our driver took me and some colleagues along beautiful roads past hills and forests to show us the Brocken[8]. It is now in the Soviet zone. The frontier is indicated by yellow stripes on the trees and across the road. But the driver may miss the signs and enter Russian territory without realising – that makes him nervous and he turns back ten kilometres from the frontier. That cannot happen to you in Berlin. The boundaries between the sectors are clearly marked: Vous entrez le secteur français – You are leaving the British, you are entering the American sector. At the entrance to the Russian sector there are the corresponding inscriptions in Russian lettering. This division has far-reaching consequences. The city is split into two halves which are separate from each other – not so much geographically, but in other decisive respects. There are two local authorities now instead of one. The town hall in the Königsstrasse is in the Russian sector. It is the seat of one local authority under Fritz Ebert, the son of the former Reichspräsident[9]. Somewhere in the west is the local government of West Berlin under Lord Mayor Professor Reuter. Only a few institutions belong to the city as a whole. Among them is the Jewish Community, which is based in Oranienburger Strasse, in the Russian sector. There are big differences between the sectors. In the West the shops are well stocked, in the East there is hardly anything. In the West there is an abundance of fruit in the shops and on the streets, in the Russian sector there is no fruit at all. True, in the Russian sector there is Werder [a small place], the ‘orchard’ of Berlin, but the Russians have bought up all the fruit to make jam, which they send to Russia.
The two zones have different economic systems. In the Russian sector there is the collective, with numerous co-operative shops as well as the ‘Handelsorganisation’ (HO). This is a state-owned, nationalised trading association. Their shops are better stocked than the private ones, the prices higher. You soon learn from little things what it means to have this single city divided into several sectors with different economic systems. I wandered around from the ‘Zoo’ station to ‘Under den Linden’. When I had had enough I asked at the Friedrichstrasse station for a ticket to ‘Zoo’ station and wanted to pay twenty pfennigs. But I did not get a ticket. ‘Only Ostmarks’ the ticket office clerk said. So there are two currencies in Berlin: Ostmarks in the Russian sector and Westmarks in the British sector. Despite all the money I had with me, I could not buy anything. I walked to the ‘Potsdamer Platz’ station but it was the same there – that station is also in the Russian sector. But a few steps further on there is the ‘Potsdamer Platz’ underground station, in the British sector, and I got my ticket there. In both sectors the currencies are relatively stable, but one Westmark is worth six Ostmarks and is a very elite currency by comparison. A customer from the British sector can buy goods very cheaply in the Russian sector and indeed many people from the West shop there in the same way as foreigners went shopping in Germany during the period of inflation [1922-1923]. They buy Ostmarks with their Westmarks in the West. There is an extensive market in the streets where all sorts of goods are on offer: American cigarettes, English or Italian coffee, dollars, pounds and also Ostmarks and Westmarks. People buying Ostmarks will perhaps get only 5.50 Ostmarks for one Westmark, and on the other hand will perhaps pay 6.50 Ostmarks for one Westmark. These differences in exchange rates are the basis of this trade. Here the visitor is confronted for the first time with the ‘black market’, in practice based on small sums, but he will soon be faced with bigger problems. The difference between the currencies produces immense difficulties in many areas of life and is bringing about the radical separation of the Western from the Eastern sectors. There is no geographical frontier, there are no guards to prevent people from entering the various sectors. The powers are invisible which prevent contacts and circulation between them.
A few days before I came to Berlin the East German government had started operations. I was in Niederschönhausen. There is a castle there where once a Prince of Hohenzollern[10] resided. Now this large area has been confiscated and cut off from the rest of the world by a massive wooden fence. Behind this barrier lives the President of the East German Republic [GDR], Wilhelm Pieck, and some others of the hierarchy of the new state. Among them is Arnold Zweig. His wife was one of my pupils in the VII Religious School of the Jewish Community almost fifty years ago; I accepted an invitation from her, and thus was able for a short time to see the area behind the wooden fence. Zweig lives in the manor house which the government has granted to him. Once it had belonged to somebody else who is perhaps now wandering about as a DP [displaced person] without a home to go to. It is splendidly equipped with furniture belonging to the state. ‘It belongs to the state’ means it has been confiscated and stolen from its owner. Communism, just like National Socialism and other revolutionary movements, has its fellow-travellers. But Zweig is proud that his books have earned him some furniture for his private use. He was in Israel, in Haifa, but a German writer, an artist of the German language, cannot earn a living there. For him and others of his circle Communism is their religion. He speaks about dialectical materialism like an orthodox Jew about the Torah of Moses. He was about to travel to Warsaw as the representative of the ‘All-German Democratic Government for Unity and Peace’, to attend the celebrations for the two hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birth.
The government he represented had been installed just a fortnight before. Joseph Stalin’s letter of congratulations to President Wilhelm Pieck had been posted on many walls in the Russian sector, and the inaugural speech of Prime Minister Grotewohl was displayed on the advertising columns. He had spoken like all the heads of government everywhere, in every country, no matter which system they represent. ‘The most important means to achieve our aims is to improve productivity.’ The seat of this government is the former Ministry of Propaganda in the Wilhelmstrasse, opposite the former Reichskanzlei. This was previously where Goebbels got up to his mischief. The former Reichskanzlei is flanked to the south by the former Ministry of Aviation, Göring’s creation once described as ‘megalomania in stone’, and to the north by Goebbels’ former Ministry, the whole symbolising the crazy arrogance and complete collapse of the National Socialist state.
The evidence of the defeat is even more impressive elsewhere in the Russian sector than in the three others. One symbol directly at the entrance is the Brandenburg Gate. It still exists, but the four-horsed chariot (Quadriga) is seriously damaged by gunfire, only one of the four horses remains and three of its feet were shot away with only one still sticking up into the air. Viktoria[11] has disappeared, in its place has been hoisted a large red flag. Like other monuments of Prussian grandeur the Neue Wache is burnt out and deserted. Across the gate there is a long banner on which is written ‘Let there be peace!’ The arsenal, with the Hall of Fame, is burnt out and partly destroyed. The trophies which were kept there have disappeared. A notice states that this building is to become a ‘House of Soviet Culture’. Russian propaganda is insistent and effective. The University is also partly burnt out and partly destroyed. Those rooms which can still be used have been turned to a large extent into co-operative shops; in some lecture halls, however, there are still lectures. The name of the University is no longer ‘Königliche Universität’ [Royal University] as it was called fifty years ago when I was a student there, it is now ‘Humboldt Universität’. Somewhere in the West a ‘Freie Universität’ [Free University] has been founded which claims to be the genuine one. That is why there are large posters calling upon the students to defend the unity of their University just as their ancestors had done in 1848 [the year of the German Revolution] against that institution in the West which is splitting the University.
In the building the propaganda for the Stakhanovite system is conspicuous. This is a new way of organising work. In the English press it is called a kind of modern slavery and the way in which the Soviets have brought back slavery in Europe. The posters in the University present a very different idea. Pictures and texts show how the miner Stakhanov had one day beaten the record of some face worker because of the special way he had gone about his work, how he had consequently been entrusted with organising the work and how he had increased the productivity of mining and of the whole economy in Russia with it, in a way unheard of before. They say his system will free the working masses from excessive work and will give them liberty at last. May workers and employers decide who is right. In any case it is surprising to see how the same management system is praised by one group as the way to paradise whereas others condemn it as the way to hell.
I have not seen a lot of Russian military personnel in Berlin. As in the other sectors and in West Germany, the occupation in the Russian sector is ‘invisible’. Only the police, among them a considerable number of females, seem from their outward appearance and uniforms to be Russian. But they only look like Russians, in reality they are Germans.
There is greater poverty in Berlin than anywhere else. When you stop in the street you will be asked by well-dressed men, both young and old, if you perhaps need a guide. I have received petitions and begging letters from persons unknown to me and I was told that people keep sending them in large quantities, hoping to get some money from time to time.
The defeat is also demonstrated in the names of streets. The former ‘Kronprinzenallee’ [Crown Prince Avenue] in Grünewald is now called Clay Avenue[12] by West Berlin in grateful recognition of General Clay’s support. In the Russian sector one of the most beautiful streets is now called Thälmannstrasse[13].
Another street, in the Tiergarten, is now named Reichpietsch-Ufer [Reichpietsch Bank], to commemorate the sailor Ernst Reichpietsch, one of the leaders of the German navy rebellion in 1917, who was then shot. What will these streets be called in fifty or one hundred years, I wonder.
II
Nowadays 7,500 Jews live in Berlin. That is not many compared with the 173,000 in 1925. But Berlin is still by far the biggest Jewish Community in Germany, a fact which is very important. In Berlin single Jews are not condemned to live an extremely lonely life, in contrast to those in other places. Although the 7,500 Jews live in very different districts all over the city they can meet those that they get on with. I was invited by Dr Rosenberg, the senior consultant of the Jewish hospital. There were other guests there too. It was a pleasant evening, with most interesting conversations which could have taken place anywhere. To that extent life for a German Jew is easier and less dreary than in other places. I was received by the Community leaders and learnt a lot. The gentlemen there are convinced that the number of Jews in their Community is fairly constant and will remain so or at least will not change greatly within the foreseeable future. They believe that on the whole migration has stopped, most of those who now live here have a special relationship with Berlin, many were born in Berlin. They will stay unless particular circumstances force them to emigrate. As everywhere else, it is mostly the elderly who explain that they want to stay here, where their jobs and pension are, rather than live abroad as beggars. They certainly sense the impending danger in Germany and particularly in Berlin, but they are resigned and say, quite rightly, that it is dangerous for them everywhere and that there is no security anywhere. But it is true, looking at the Community’s administration board you can see that there is a strong desire to emigrate. There are different members now from four years ago, at the end of the war. The then Chairman, Kammergerichtsrat [Supreme Court Judge] Dr Fabian, has emigrated with his family to the USA, probably because of his children. For it is generally agreed that the children must not stay in Germany but must be prepared for emigration, to either Israel or elsewhere. Nobody thinks about life after the next two generations but they believe there will be a future within this time span.
It seems that in Berlin comparatively more Jews are in employment than anywhere else. A register of the members of the Community, drawn up according to their jobs, was read out to me in the Community office, but so quickly that I could not catch everything. The list comprises 1,100 names of people who are in work. If I am not mistaken there are only four Jewish commercial travellers left. What is striking in Berlin, as everywhere, is the small number of doctors, because they can work almost anywhere, and so do not need to come back, unlike those of other professions. The number of jurists, however, is relatively large, as it is everywhere. In Berlin there are fifty-one ‘juristische Personen’ [jurists] as they are called in the register. The list begins: Kammergerichtspräsident [President of the Supreme Court] 1, Senatspräsident [President of the Senate] 1. In fact, there are two supreme courts now, one for the western sector and one for the Russian sector. The President of the eastern Supreme Court, Dr Freund, is a very active member of the Community. There are twenty-seven lawyers. Whereas in other places there are few Jewish shops or none at all, the Community administration board in Berlin has set up shops for a number of members who thus earn enough to live on, although the legislative body and the administration try to replace the private shops with expropriated shops or those run by the co-operative or the ‘Handelsorganisation’, and they try to make life pretty difficult for the private shop owners by not delivering enough goods and in other ways.
As already mentioned the Jews in all four sectors form a single Community and they are proud of it. The occupying powers have introduced their special system of administration almost everywhere. Thus in the British sector the English have replaced the function of the Lord Mayor by [appointing] a British Mayor. Here the city is represented by a citizen who is elected for one year and has the title ‘Lord Mayor’. But the head of the administration is a civil servant, elected for twelve years, whose title is ‘Oberstadtdirektor’ and who is in charge of the administration. The Russians have established something similar for the ecclesiastical administration, a board with a central office which belongs to the municipal authorities and which consists of representatives of all the denominations and also of similar groups such as the Unions of Spiritualists or of Anthroposophists. The representative of the Jewish Community, Sigmund Weltlinger, is so pleased with his role, and prides himself on the fact that the meetings of this body are the only occasion when the mayors of the two municipal authorities which govern Berlin meet and shake hands. But it is not definite that this arrangement will last and this gives cause for concern. It is the Communists in the Community who demand the partition of the one Community into two, one for the Russian sector and one for the three Western sectors. The seat of the administration is in the Russian sector, whereas the majority of the members live in the Western sectors.
One synagogue – in Pestalozzistrasse – has not been damaged at all. Others were damaged and have been repaired, while most of the synagogues were destroyed. New prayer rooms have been arranged for small groups, one in Joachimsthaler Strasse and one in the office building of the Community. The synagogues are too big for the few people who wish to worship. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur there are services in the Rykestrasse synagogue and on these occasions the synagogue is fairly full. But the services on Pesach, Shavu’ot and Sukkot are not attended at all. Daily services as well as those on the Sabbath are held in a prayer room containing about eighty seats. I gave a lecture there and the room was quite full. In the Pestalozzistrasse synagogue I gave another lecture. There may have been about the same number of people as in the Rykestrasse, but in that huge room they were lost, a depressing sight and a painful reminder of the fact that the clothes have become too big for the Jews of Berlin[14]. The same is true of other Communities. In Hamburg, services are held in the small but beautiful synagogue of the Oppenheim Old People’s Home. They were always quite well attended. The Community still owns the big temple, but there are not enough members to fill it and so they have let it to the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk[15]. In the big auditorium there I gave a lecture on the situation in Israel, the room was full of music stands and instruments. Here too, the clothes have become too big for the shrunken body. In the Pestalozzistrasse I heard a real chasan [cantor] again for the first time in Germany. His name is Nechama, he is a Sephardic Jew from Salonika [Thessaloniki], spent a long time in a concentration camp [KZ], afterwards came to Berlin and now all he wants is to emigrate to the USA because, as he says, his income in Berlin is too small. The way he led the prayers was most beautiful, but his reading [from the Torah] left much to be desired. In Berlin as well as in Hamburg I also saw a few children, two or three, at the service. They get a special treat: during the Kiddush [blessing] they walk up to the cantor and are allowed to drink what remains in the Kiddush cup. There are some teachers who give lessons, only a few on the whole, but at least the children get an idea of what Hebrew and Judaism mean. The Community has engaged one preacher, Mr Riesenburger. He performs wedding ceremonies and funerals. About one year ago an American organisation appointed young Steven Schwarzschild as liberal rabbi in Berlin. He got married here and his wife, obviously an excellent social worker, manages the Berlin office of the Jewish Relief Unit.
Schwarzschild belongs to the British or American administration and lives in the British sector, in a house that the military government has requisitioned for British officers and civil servants. The furniture was provided by the occupying authorities. He [the rabbi] eats out with his wife, and not kosher food. Apparently he is a good rabbi but he is faced with great difficulties. Not long before I came he had given a sermon against the black market, whereupon some group – I don’t know which – had threatened to drag him out the pulpit next time. According to what I was told he had been intimidated by the threats and did not preach the next time. I was not able to get any further information. I spoke to him personally only once. On that occasion Hans Joachim Schoeps, a professor of philosophy or theology – I am not quite sure which – in Erlangen was with him. Schoeps is a Jew and does not want to be anything else. It is a shame that my time in Berlin was so taken up and the whole stay was so short. I did not have a chance to look into many things which were important to me. Schwarzschild is going back to the USA in the spring. All the rabbis who so far have worked in West Germany, Helfgott and Broch, only stayed for a short time. Now the committee of the Community has again appointed Moritz Freier, once the rabbi of the Jewish Community, as the conservative and orthodox rabbi in Berlin. It will not be easy for him. The older generation still has some general knowledge about Judaism; when I had finished my lecture – stories from the Talmud – in the prayer room in the Rykestrasse there was not only applause, as usual, but also one man from the audience stepped forward and said Rabbanan Kaddish. But a lot of aspects of Jewish life have disappeared almost completely. This is the case with Kashrut in particular. There is only one Jewish restaurant in the whole of Berlin, in Schlachtensee. The food is good but expensive. One meal, including a bottle of beer, is twelve DM [West German Marks]. I asked them where their guests have their meals on Shabbos [Sabbath], the restaurant is so far away, on the outskirts of the city, that you can only get there by car. They explained to me that some guests stay overnight on Fridays and that those who cannot do so are given packed lunches on Friday afternoon. On the whole Kashrut [Kosher food] is finished. The hospital of the Community which I will speak about later no longer observes the rules of Kosher life. Only a small percentage of the patients are still Jews. In Berlin, just as everywhere else, there is a lack of rabbis able to represent Judaism to the Community as well as to the outside world, who are able to answer the many questions of Jews or who are the equals of the Christian theologians in the religious discussions which are now occurring. During a conversation with Sigmund Weltlinger I learnt what problems Jewish men are concerned with nowadays. He spent a long time in a KZ and studied the Bible thoroughly there. He now knows it very well. There is above all one disconcerting passage that he does not understand. In Samuel 1, 2.25 it says of Eli’s sons: ‘Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay them’[16]. This passage shocked and worried him and he was at a loss for an answer.
Apart from their synagogues the Community also has its own institutions. The biggest is the Jewish hospital in Iranische Strasse. Dr Rosenberg is the Director. He lost his wife, Eugen Fuchs’ daughter, in a KZ and has married again, a nurse. His son, a junior doctor, works with him and under him. He showed me the hospital. In his view it is even today excellently equipped and can carry out the many different modern methods of treatment. I saw the newly fitted out rooms of children’s ward, which came into use for the first time on that very day, nicely decorated with characters from German fairy tales. Everything looked very cheerful. But the hospital gives the same impression as the synagogues: it also is too big for the Jewish population that has shrunk so much. As already mentioned, only a small number of the patients are Jews and this is one of the reasons why it is not run according to Jewish precepts. Another problem is how to get doctors. As I have already explained there are only a few Jewish doctors in Germany and in particular in Berlin. They can get jobs in many countries and so they are not as keen as, for example, the lawyers on returning to Germany. The management is seriously considering employing Jewish doctors from abroad on short-term contracts. Linked to the hospital are two homes, a children’s home and an old people’s home. I did not have enough time to see them, but I had the chance to visit the home for old people and children in Niederschönhausen in the Russian sector. I think in the children’s home there are eighteen children, mostly from mixed marriages[17]. The education here is different from that in the English sector. From their earliest years the children learn to play chess. The Director, Mr Baruch, told me that there were some good players among them. He teaches Hebrew. On the walls there are Hebrew songs, written in Roman not Hebrew letters. On the desk was a textbook of the Hebrew language – judging by the pictures it was aimed at little children. Some days before, after my lecture in the Rykestrasse, a woman had told me about her troubles. Her husband living in the Russian sector was taken from their flat by the Russians in April and has been missing ever since. Enquiries with the authorities produced no result. The highest authority – a general whose name I have forgotten – says he know nothing of the case. This case is direct evidence that people really do vanish into thin air in the Russian sector. In the children’s home I learnt exactly the same thing. In a twelve-year-old girl’s room there were two photographs on the bedside table, one of her deceased mother, the other one of her father and herself. But the father was taken from their flat some weeks ago; he had been employed as a civil servant by the authorities in the Russian sector and has been missing ever since. Nobody knows anything about this and that is why the little girl has been taken to the home. Under the same roof or next to it is one of the two old people’s homes. The rooms are nicely furnished and cosy. I asked one woman whether she liked it there. She said she did. But someone who must know about it, the Director or someone I think, told me that this was not possible. None of them has a room to themselves and people who live very close together soon get on one another’s nerves. Moreover the economic situations of the inmates vary widely, some are poorer than others, some get parcels, some don’t. This leads to envy, and you can’t stop it. This bad situation does not even change for the better when the lucky ones share some of their riches with the others.
Yet I had a lovely fifteen minutes in the old people’s home. The oldest male Jew in Berlin lives there, Mr Falkenstein, a former glazier in Schlochau. He is ninety-nine years old. He was just sitting there with his kippah [yarmulke, or skullcap] on his head, and when he took it off you could see the most beautiful white hair, full and thick. Beside him lay his tefillin[18], he is a pious man. He puts them on every day and has his breakfast only when he has completed this. It takes him a long time now, until ten o’clock or half past ten. My companion told him that at his age he did not have to be so careful about this and said that I was an expert. But the old man did not accept this, explaining that he was almost one hundred years old and did not want to change the habits of a lifetime. But he too has joyful moments. Every afternoon at three o’clock he puts the radio on and then he can hear the voice of his grandson, who is an announcer. There is a radio in every room. As in other old people’s homes, the residents here who are not Jews are the non-Jewish spouses in mixed marriages.
Twice I have visited the cemetery in Weissensee, in the Russian sector. It is beautifully kept, the fighting in Berlin has not destroyed its peace. In the office I asked about a grave that I wanted to see. It was found in no time with the help of a file. My parents’ graves are situated in a place of honour. On both sides – right and left – many people are buried whom I knew very well and who were close to me. Thus the visits to the cemetery were something of a spiritual reunion.
On 30 October, two days before I had to return home, I attended a meeting of Jewish lawyers and other jurists. They had been summoned by the Community administration board. The Community is claiming the restitution of a large amount of land which they lost under Hitler through confiscation or in other ways. But apart from that there are more claims for restitution in Berlin than anywhere else. The Community has taken these on too. In order to pursue and deal with them they have just set up a compensation commission. Its Chairman is Mr Löwenthal, who also spoke at the meeting. The Jewish lawyers, however, are not happy with these activities on the part of the Community. They say it is their job to deal with these claims and they feel restricted by the actions of the Community and also of other interested people and in particular the big Jewish organisations abroad. These have founded their own institutions; two other institutions, JRSO, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organisation, and a bank for restitution, both with their headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, are pursuing the same aims. Many are hoping to work for this restitution and thus earn some money. The lawyers are embittered in particular by an article by Dr Strauss, a colleague who claimed in a New York newspaper that restitution should be enforced in Germany by foreign lawyers, either from England or from the United States. [He said] the moral standards of German lawyers had fallen, they did not keep their clients informed by carbon copy of any changes in their legal matters, as had been common practice previously, allegedly because of a lack of paper. He admitted, however, that the lawyers were intimidated, the Germans as well as the Jews; in short, one should not engage any lawyer in Germany, not even a Jewish one. The discussion produced some important insights. There are still fundamental questions open to discussion. The argument about whether Jews should be judges in these in these trials is still going on. In Berlin about 5,000 sites are claimed for restitution. Between 30,000 and 40,000 persons are said to be entitled to claim. A number of claimants are baptised Jews. The Community acts for them too. Lawyers complain about the difficulties they have with legal processes. The administrators of the sites do not provide any information to enquirers. There are high costs, and many of those entitled to claim cannot pay them. One lawyer called the briefs he has been given a collection of briefs of the poor. Another argued that these cases are not exclusively a matter of civil law. ‘The state has robbed us, and the state has to make up for it.’ But that is not easy. Who is to make up for the losses? One lawyer mentioned the fees for a certificate of inheritance. Another called it immoral that the state should demand a fee when they [the state] had murdered the person who left the inheritance. The meeting has given me a profound insight into the situation of the Russian as well as of the Western sectors. The underlying factors have become visible.
On Shabbos [Sabbath], 29 October, I took part in the service in the Pestalozzistrasse synagogue. The evening before I made a short speech on Neshamah Jethera [the spirit of the Sabbath], the other soul which usually sleeps and awakes on the Sabbath. The Sidrah [weekly portion of the Torah] was [on the subject of] Noah and so in my sermon I explained the idea of the Talmud that Noah had seen three worlds, one flourishing, one falling and one new-born. Our generation understands even better than our ancestors the truth which is expressed in these words. On Friday evening I had been invited to a meal by Dr Rosenberg and his wife. Later some more guests arrived, among them Sigmund Weltlinger and his wife. We had an extremely good conversation.
On Monday I spent some time in the office the JRU, Jewish Relief Unit. One man, an electrical engineer, was in absolute despair. He wanted to emigrate to Australia with his family but an entry permit was refused because he lived in East Germany[19]. Nobody knew what to do. These are the special problems of the people in the Russian zone. The next day, Tuesday, I returned home. Just as on my journey to Germany Mr Bruchheimer was travelling with me, the most pleasant companion. I am sorry to say, this was the last time I was to see him. Not long after our return he was knocked down by a car and died immediately. Between seven and eight o’clock we arrived in Vlissingen and at eight o’clock went on board. The sea was calm, the night absolutely beautiful. Later there was fog which caused a delay. In the morning we arrived at Harwich. There was a big squadron of the British fleet in the harbour: destroyers, cruisers, battleships, a most impressive sight. The customs officers were very strict and it took a long time until the train was able to leave. But a few hours later we were at Liverpool Street station. Herbert was waiting for me. We had a shock because the customs officers in Harwich had stowed my luggage away so well that in London it could not be found straightaway. But soon we were able to relax and I was back in 18C Belsize Park, grateful for an extraordinary journey which had taken me back for six weeks to my former profession and which brought me into contact with what was left of my former world in West Germany and in Berlin, and also with a great deal of what has come back into being.
[1] Translator’s note: there was no common frontier between the Russian zone and Russia
[2] ‘Have you seen/met Alex?’ – Alexen is dialect
[3] Translator’s note: the Reichstag was destroyed in an arson attack on 27 February 1933, a welcome pretext for Hitler and other leading Nazis to rid themselves of their political enemies, eg communists, socialists etc, immediately and to annul almost all fundamental rights (eg habeas corpus etc). The Reichstag building was repaired because Hitler obviously liked it and wanted to keep it, although of course he hated the institution itself; it was not used by the so-called ‘Parliament’ (Reichstag), no longer a democratic institution, which sat in the Kroll-Oper (now disappeared). The Reichstag building survived the heavy bombing of Berlin but the fighting between the Soviets and Germans ended almost at the same time as the Reichstag was taken and heavily damaged and burnt by Soviet soldiers – there is a famous photo of a Soviet soldier hoisting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag. This building was the symbol of Fascism for the Soviets, so it had to be destroyed and for some time it was almost a place of pilgrimage for them.
[4] A park near the Brandenburg Gate
[5] Office of the Reichskanzler, ie Prime Minister: from 1933 to 1945 Adolf Hitler
[6] Keitel – Chief of the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – Supreme Command of the Army) 1938-1945. Dedicated follower of Hitler, sentenced to death at Nuremberg trials 1946
[7] This was the case in 1949, before the building of the Berlin wall
[8] The highest of the Harz mountains
[9] Friedrich Ebert, the first President of Weimar Republic
[10] Hohenzollern: the dynasty of the last German Emperor, William II
[11] A female statue on a high column, symbolising victory
[12] Translator’s note: General Clay, the Head of the American army in Germany, ordered the air-lift between West Berlin and West Germany on 24 June 1948, immediately after the Soviets started the blockade of Berlin during the night of 23-24 June
[13] Translator’s note: Ernst Thälmann became the leader of the Communist Party (KPD) in 1924, was imprisoned soon after the Reichstag had been set on fire in 1933, and was killed in the Buchenwald concentration camp (KZ) (near Weimar) in 1944, either by an air raid or by the SS. After the war he was made one of the icons of Communist resistance, although he did not have anything to do with the KZ or with the resistance in the camp – he was completely separated from the other prisoners and under the special control of the Gestapo
[14] ie that the number of Jews in Berlin has become very small indeed
[15] NWDR – radio station
[16] Or, in a more modern translation: ‘But they would not listen to their father, for the LORD had decided to kill them’
[17] ie one Jewish and one Christian parent
[18] Small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah
[19] The Russian zone, later the GDR
