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POST 133—”THE BUTCHER OF PRAGUE,” THE STORY BEHIND A UNIQUE PHOTO OF REINHARD HEYDRICH (PART II)

Note: In this second part of Post 133, I highlight an extraordinary photograph sent to me by a reader, Peter Albrecht von Preußen, featuring high-level Nazis taken at his family’s von Preußen estate in Silesia in around 1936 or 1937 in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland]. The picture allows me to explore two issues, namely, support for the National Socialists among the aristocracy and noblemen and the so-called “Gay Nazis myth.” The von Preußens were distinguished members of the royal House of Hohenzollern, the family from which Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, came from.

In part I of Post 133, I introduced readers to Mr. Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 1), a German living in the United States who is a descendant of the royal German House of Hohenzollern. Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated the throne in 1918 following Germany’s defeat in World War I, hails from this family. In fact Kaiser Wilhelm II is Peter’s second cousin three times removed. (Figure 2)

Figure 1. My friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen, a descendant of the royal German House of Hohenzollern

Figure 2. A visual showing Peter’s relationship to Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, second cousin three times removed

Even more distantly, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom is Peter’s second cousin five times removed. (Figure 3) As a further bit of trivia, Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, and together they had nine children. Their offspring married into royal and noble families across the European continent, earning Victoria the moniker “the grandmother of Europe” and spreading hemophilia in European royalty. Enough about sovereign relationships.

Figure 3. Another visual showing Peter’s relationship to the United Kingdom’s Queen Victoria, second cousin five times removed

As I mentioned in part I of this post, Peter first contacted me on the 7^th of March, sharing with me a unique group photo taken in 1936 or 1937 (Figure 4) at his family’s castle in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland]. (Figure 5) What makes this photo so unusual is that it shows the notorious Reinhard Heydrich (Figure 6), principal architect of the Holocaust, known as “The Butcher of Prague” and other frightful epithets, along with other high-ranking Nazis visiting the von Preußen estate in Silesia; seated in the front row of this photos is Peter’s great-great-uncle, Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen (Figure 7), the prince who protected my half-Jewish third cousin Agnes Stieda and her family during World War II.

Figure 4. The photograph from 1936 or 1937 taken at the von Preußen in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland] when several high-level Nazis visited, including the “Butcher of Prague,” Reinhard Heydrich (photo courtesy of Peter Albrecht von Preußen)

Figure 5. Aerial photo of the former von Preußen castle in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland] as it appears from the outside today (photo courtesy of Peter Albrecht von Preußen)

Figure 6. Closeup of Reinhard Heydrich on the day he visited Castle Kamenz

Figure 7. Closeup of Prinz Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen when he hosted high-ranking Nazis at his estate in Kamenz, Germany in 1936 or 1937

As I explained in part I, Friedrich Heinrich was openly homosexual. Several of the high-ranking Nazis who visited Kamenz on the day the photo was taken were also bisexual or arguably bisexual. More on this below.

Beyond discussing the high-level Nazis who visited Castle Kamenz, the photo allows me to explore two topics of broader interest, namely, the question of support or resistance among the nobles and aristocrats to National Socialism and the issue of gays in the ranks of the National Socialists. As a lead-in, I would note that if I was exploring these subjects as an academic endeavor rather than simply providing context for my ancestral research, I would take a much more rigorous intellectual approach. For my purposes, however, I simply want to provide some basic background.

Before I discuss the senior Nazis photographed at Castle Kamenz, let me first attempt to answer a question I initially asked Peter after he sent me the picture, namely, what occasioned the visit by the Nazis to the von Preußen estate.

Readers will recall that in the first part of Post 133, I discussed the relationship that Prinz Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen had with members of the “Organization Consul” during the 1920s. The Consul was a right-wing organization opposed to the harsh terms imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty and dedicated to regime change by violent means. It was formed by members of the disbanded Freikorps group Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and operated in the Weimar Republic between 1920 and 1922, when it was banned. Following the ban, Prince Friedrich Heinrich, also opposed to the “repressive measures” of the Versailles Treaty, allowed its former adherents to conduct live fire exercises at Kamenz. Many supporters of the banned Organization Consul went on to join the National Socialist Party.

While never a member of the Nazi Party, Friedrich Heinrich’s relationship with future Nazi party elite no doubt stems from the friendships he established during the 1920s. Given his sexuality, it makes sense that he would have associated with other gays. Regardless of his sexual and political leanings, however, it seems highly unlikely that Friedrich Heinrich would have been in any position to reject an overture by Reinhard Heydrich to visit Castle Kamenz for a few days. It’s safe to assume that Reinhard Heydrich and his entourage invited themselves to the von Preußen estate.

When Peter Albrecht initially sent me a photo of the gathering at Castle Kamenz, he identified five high-level Nazis by name, specifically, Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; Pastor Lethar Preller; Reinhard Heydrich; Kurt Daluege; and Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen. Let me say a few words about each.

Figure 8. Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884-1954), a high-ranking Nazi who visited Castle Kamenz

Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884-1954) (Figure 8) was the last sovereign duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha until 1918 when the Prussian monarchy and Germany’s 22 constituent monarchies were abolished following the German Empire’s defeat in World War I. Apropos of what I mentioned earlier about Queen Victoria, Charles Edward was a male-line grandson of her and Prince Albert. Though he spent his childhood years in the United Kingdom he was sent to Germany in his mid-teens. His support for his adopted country during World War I led to him being viewed with increased hostility in the United Kingdom, where he was eventually stripped of his British titles. After this, he drifted towards far-right politics, and later became involved in the Nazi regime. After World War II, he was fined by a Denazification court and lost ownership of land in what later became East Germany.

Figure 9. Pastor Lethar Preller at the time he visited Castle Kamenz

Pastor Lethar Preller. (Figure 9) His history is unknown though he is believed to have been a member of the Nazi Party and/or SS.

Figure 10. The “Butcher of Prague,” Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) (Figure 10) was talked about in part I of Post 133, so I refer readers to my earlier discussion for more details. I will only add the following quote from Wikipedia about Heydrich’s assassination because it explains why Kurt Daluege, another visitor at Castle Kamenz in 1936 or 1937, succeeded Heydrich as the Deputy/Acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia: “Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died from his injuries a week later. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; the men and boys aged 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.”

Kurt Daluege (1897-1946) (Figure 11) was chief of the national uniformed Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Daluege directed the German measures of retribution for Heydrich’s assassination, including the Lidice massacre. Wikipedia notes other war crimes of which Daluege was guilty: “During the war in 1941, he attended a mass shooting of 4,435 Jews by Police Battalion 307 near Brest-Litowsk and a mass shooting of Jews in Minsk. Furthermore, in October 1941 Daluege signed deportation orders for Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to Riga and Minsk. On 7 July 1942, he attended a conference led by Himmler which discussed the ‘enlargement’ of Operation Reinhard, the secretive Nazi plan to mass-murder Polish Jews in the General Government district of occupied Poland, and other matters involving SS and police policies in the east.” After the end of World War II, he was extradited to Czechoslovakia, tried, convicted, and executed in 1946.

Figure 12. Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen, a high-level Nazi who visited Castle Kamenz

Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1901-1949) (Figure 12) was a grandson of the 19^th century Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, well-known to readers. He was a member of the Nazi Party and in 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag as a Nazi member. In 1935 he became chairman of the regional council (Regierungspräsident) for Stettin [today: Szczecin, Poland], and later also for Potsdam. By 1942, presumably disillusioned by the course of the war and Germany’s worsening prospects, he reached out to other members of the German aristocracy who were working against the Nazi regime with the aim of beginning negotiations with the Allies; some of these aristocrats were involved in the 20^th of July 1944 Plot to assassinate Hitler. Despite being aware of these plans and having connections to the plotters, after the failed attempt, von Bismarck merely lost his position in the Reichstag and was expelled from the SS but was not tortured. His powerful connections and name recognition saved him, though he was nonetheless incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. In September 1949 Bismarck and his wife were killed in a car accident near Bremen in the American Occupation Zone.

The presence of the aristocrats and Nazi Party members including Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen at Prinz Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen’s Silesian estate in 1936 or 1937 attests to an ongoing relationship between former members of the monarchy and the National Socialists.

In layman’s terms, below I will attempt to succinctly explain what may initially have attracted noblemen and monarchists to National Socialism and some events that took place during the 1930s when Hitler consolidated power often at the expense of the aristocrats. To understand the extent of their resistance to the Nazi regime in this period, I asked my fourth cousin, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch (Figure 13), for some background on this question, so some of the following discussion is a synopsis of what he explained.

Figure 13. My fourth cousin, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch, who helped explain noble resistance to and acquiescence with the Nazis

The National Socialists were adherents of the so-called Völkisch movement, a German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19^th century through to the Nazi era and beyond. The principal belief of ethno-nationalists is that nations are defined based on a shared heritage, such as common language, common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry. Individuals who don’t share this common heritage are deemed to be second-class citizens. Völkisch nationalists generally considered Jews to be from a different Volk (“race” or “folk”) than Germans and deemed them to be inferior. This was the central tenet which led to the Holocaust. Many noblemen also adhered to Völkisch nationalism, thus drew common cause with the National Socialists in this regard. Other aristocrats and monarchists, however, kept a critical distance from National Socialism, viewing Hitler as an “upstart” and the Sturmabteilung (SA, literally “Storm Detachment” or Stormtroopers) as “uneducated thugs.”

Very quickly after his ascension to power in 1933, Hitler eliminated critics within his administration from the noble classes and the Wehrmacht, the German Army. During the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934, Hitler had Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, who had been an early ally but whom he saw as a growing threat, executed by the SS during the “Night of the Long Knives.” In the Blomberg-Fritsch affair of 1938, Hitler succeeded, in the context of partly contrived stories, in deposing Werner von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and Werner von Blomberg, Minister of War, who had dared to object to his aggressive foreign policy. Then, during the September Conspiracy in 1938, the so-called “Valkyrie Conspiracy,” Hitler faced the first attempt by Germans to bring down his regime; headed by the Chief of the German General Staff at the time, Franz Halder, it was supported by many senior army generals. Halder lost his nerve and the coup attempt was ultimately undermined because of the Munich Agreement when France and Great Britain accepted Hitler’s word that signing away the Sudetenland was Hitler’s “last” territorial ambition, and they called the agreement “Peace in our Time.”

The attitude of the Hohenzollerns was one of opportunism. By nurturing the hope that the monarchy would be restored, the Nazis hoped to enlist the support of Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 14) Support for the Nazis among the Hohenzollerns and the constituent monarchies was a mixed bag, so to speak. So, for example in the case of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, who had initially promoted the rise of the Nazis later promised in July 1941 to make himself available to the resistance, only to reverse course again shortly thereafter. More clearly aligned against the Nazis, by contrast, was the House of Wittelsbach from Bavaria, notably Crown Prince Rupprecht.

Figure 14. Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, in Doorn, Netherlands in May 1926

As World War II ground on and Germany’s fortunes changed and their atrocities came to light, an increasing number of initially enthusiastic and moderately supportive grandees distanced themselves from National Socialism and became opponents of the regime. Aristocrats often played a leading role within resistance circles, and military officers from noble families also played a central role in a series of specific attempts to assassinate Hitler. This was particularly in evidence during the 20^th of July Plot.

One curious side note. Peter Albrecht shared with me a series of news articles he discovered related to a purported “purge of princes” by Hitler in 1939, including from his royal House of Hohenzollern. The story was printed in London’s “Daily Herald” (Figures 15a-b); New York’s “Daily News” (Figures 16a-b); and the “Cleveland Plain Dealer” (Figure 17) on the 14^th of November 1939. As it turns out, several weeks prior, Peter’s great-grandfather, Joachim Albrecht von Preußen (b. 27 September 1876-d. 24 October 1939) (Figure 18) had passed away of natural causes. Since Joachim Albrecht had been friends with the head of Germany’s Foreign Office, the story was shared with correspondents in London. While no foul play was ever suspected, the foreign press, intentionally or unintentionally, mischaracterized Joachim’s death as part of a “monarchist putsch” by Hitler, possibly for propaganda purposes. Regardless, contrary to what western papers reported at the time, there was no monarchist purge in 1939.

Figure 15a. Cover page of November 14, 1939, issue of London’s “Daily Herald” with article about “purge of princes”

Figure 15b. Inset from November 14, 1939, issue of London’s “Daily Herald” article about “purge of princes” mentioning the death of Peter Albrecht’s great-grandfather, Joachim Albrecht von Preußen, on the 14th of October 1939

Figure 16a. Cover page of November 14, 1939, issue of New York’s “Daily News” article naming Germany’s ex-Kaiser in a bomb plot to kill Hitler

Figure 16b. Inside page of November 14, 1939, issue of New York’s “Daily News” article naming Germany’s ex-Kaiser in a bomb plot to kill Hitler

Figure 17. Cover page of November 14, 1939, issue of the “Cleveland Plains Dealer” article discussing purported anti-monarchist purge by the Gestapo

Figure 18. 1920 photo of Peter Albrecht’s great-grandfather, Joachim Albrecht von Preußen, whose death on the 24th of October 1939 was the presumed cause of the rumors that Hitler began executing members of the royal families

The above is all I will say about aristocratic support for and opposition to National Socialism. Next, I want to move on to a discussion of the question of homosexuality within the ranks of the Nazi Party.

There is a widespread and pervasive myth claiming that homosexuals were prevalent and prominent as a group within the Nazi Party, a falsity referred to as the “Gay Nazis myth.” As the German cultural historian Andreas Pretzel has written in his article “Schwule Nazis (Homosexual Nazis),” “The legend of the homosexual Nazi has been used for decades after the Nazi era to deny or marginalize the extent and intensity of homosexual persecution, as well as to deny the memory of, discredit or prevent the memory of persecuted homosexual men.”

The impression that homosexuality was ubiquitous in Nazi organizations was created by antifascist leftists, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The clause in the German Criminal Code that criminalized homosexuality was adopted in 1871 and was referred to as Paragraph 175. While both the SPD and the KPD were supporters of repealing this provision, both parties opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against opponents. For example, in what is referred to as the Röhm affair of 1931 and 1932, anti-Nazis including the SPD, publicly disclosed Ernst Röhm’s homosexuality in an apparent bid to delay the Nazi seizure of power when supporters of the democratic Weimar Republic justifiably sensed their time was running out.

According to a footnote in the Wikipedia entry on “Gay Nazis myth,” there are three events which firmly established the stereotype that homosexuality was a characteristic of the Nazi system: (1) the just mentioned Röhm scandal of 1931 and 1932; (2) the Reichstag fire in 1933 when the parliament building was destroyed and a clique of homosexual stormtroopers was blamed; and (3) the previously discussed Night of the Long Knives or the Röhm Putsch in 1934 when a large number of leaders of the SA, many allegedly gay chieftains promoted by Röhm, were liquidated for political reasons. While leftists have largely been blamed for spreading the idea that homosexuals were prominent in the Nazi Party, it benefited Hitler to exaggerate the extent of homosexuality within the SA to justify his 1934 purge. Thus, it can be argued that the avowedly homophobic Nazis themselves contributed to the notion that gays were widespread in their ranks.

According to Andreas Pretzel, “What role homosexuality actually played in the Nazi movement, however, is largely unanswered, because important sources, such as those on the murdered homosexual SA leaders, are missing, because they were destroyed after the murder campaigns of the summer of 1934. Therefore, there have been various attempts to explain the significance of homosexuality for the Nazi movement through gender-historical perspectives and to find explanations as to why the avowedly homophobic Nazi movement attracted homosexuals, tolerated them for a while and even allowed some to rise to leadership and executive positions.” What is clear though is that while some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence they were overrepresented.

In closing, let me return to the high-level Nazis that visited Castle Kamenz and Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen in 1936 or 1937. Friedrich Heinrich is clearly known to have been gay. His Wikipedia entry confirms this, as does a 1959 article in Der Spiegel magazine entitled “Die Insel der Wachteln” speaking of the time Friedrich spent on Italy’s Isle of Capri where gays often congregated. By contrast, the Wikipedia entries for the other attendees make no mention of their sexuality, and in fact state all were married with children. This is not surprising given that the Nazi movement was admittedly homophobic; it’s likely gays would have stayed “in the closet” and been married to mask their sexual proclivities.

According to Peter Albrecht, however, both Karl Daluege and Gottfried Graf Bismarck-Schönhausen were bisexual, and Reinhard Heydrich was also arguably bisexual. The source of this information is one of Peter’s friends, Warren Allen Smith, who wrote a book entitled “Who’s Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalist, Rationalists and Non-theists”; while researching this book Mr. Smith came across information confirming these Nazis’ sexuality. Fundamentally, however, the war crimes these individuals committed is not a reflection of their sexuality, merely evidence they were inherently evil.

REFERENCES

Anti-monarchist purge by Gestapo rumored. (1939, November 14). Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“Die Insel der Wachteln” (1959 May 5). Der Spiegel, (19/1959).

“Gay Nazis myth.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nazis_myth

Name ex-Kaiser in bomb plot: Report royalist, army purge. (1939, November 14). Daily News.

New purge of princes. (1939, November 14). Daily Herald.

Pretzel, Andreas (2014). Schwule Nazis: Narrative und Desiderate. In Michael Schwartz (Ed.) Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus (pp. 69-76). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

Smith, Warren Allen. Who’s Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalist, Rationalists and Non-theists. Barricade Books, 2000.

POST 130: NAZI-CONFISCATED BOOKS STORED IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ, POLAND), MY FATHER’S BIRTH PLACE

Note: This post tiers off an earlier one where I discussed my failed attempt to obtain compensation for my family from the French Ministry of Culture for artworks confiscated from my father’s first cousin by Nazi authorities at the port of Bordeaux in December 1940. As I explained in Post 105, I’m my father’s cousin’s closest surviving blood relative. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi’s primary agency of plunder, spearheaded the seizure of artworks in Bordeaux but was also heavily involved in the plunder of libraries and archives throughout the areas the Nazis occupied. Surprisingly, many of the books wound up in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Silesia where my father was born.

POST 126: MY GREAT-AUNT FRANZISKA BRUCK, FLORIST TO THE LAST GERMAN KAISER

POST 127: MY GREAT-AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK, “LA COMMUNISTE,” A DDR APPARATCHIK

This story begins in 2014 when I spent 13 weeks in Europe traveling from Poland to Spain exploring places associated with my Jewish family’s diaspora. This included visiting the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, Berlin’s westernmost borough, where the surviving papers of two of my renowned great-aunts, Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) and Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970), are archived; both have been the subject of recent posts. I photographed all the documents, pictures, and personal effects in the files for later study.

Upon my return to the states, I tried to make sense of what I’d obtained. Obviously, the letters were most useful though some were handwritten in Sütterlinschrift or Kurrentschrift, historical forms of German handwriting that are indecipherable to me as well as most contemporary Germans; fortunately, I know a few older German friends and relatives who learned Sütterlin in school who were able to translate these letters for me.

The most informative letter, however, was a typed one, composed by one of my father’s first cousins, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, to her aunt, my great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck in East Berlin. In this letter written in 1946, Hansi explained that a painting by her recently deceased brother Fédor Löwenstein had posthumously sold for 90,000 French Francs. (Figure 1) Realizing this represented a significant amount of money at the time, I began to suspect Fédor was an accomplished artist. I already knew of his existence from photographs and other letters found among my great-aunt’s papers. (Figure 2) Additionally, knowing Fédor had died in 1946 in Nice, France, I’d previously obtained his certificat de décès, death certificate, when I visited L’Hôtel de Ville in Nice, Nice’s City Hall.

Figure 1. The section of Jeanne Löwenstein’s 1946 letter to her aunt Elsbeth Bruck telling her of the posthumous sale of one of her brother Fédor Löwenstein’s paintings for 90,000 French Francs

Figure 2. Fédor Löwenstein (middle) and his brother Heinz with their mother Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck in Nice, France

I began my investigation in Nice by contacting the lady I know at L’Hôtel de Ville asking if she could find and send me Fédor’s obituary. This acquaintance did one better and sent me several web links with information about Fédor Löwenstein. Unbeknownst to me during my 13 weeks in Europe the Musée des Beaux-arts in Bordeaux, France had featured three of Fédor’s oil paintings on display between May 15^th and August 24th. Naturally, had I known about this special exhibit, I would have detoured there to see the artworks.

The exhibit catalog (livret_lowenstein.pdf (musba-bordeaux.fr) included a lot of detail on Fédor and his paintings, and their history. (Figure 3) The exhibit and the new information confirmed what I already suspected, namely, that Löwenstein had not been an ordinary painter. He was born on the 13^th of April 1901 in Munich. He studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Berlin, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. In 1923, he moved to Paris, France, attracted by the artistic influence of the capital. Between the two world wars, an artistic movement dominated there referred to as École de Paris, the School of Paris, which was not an actual school. It was in this rich artistic context that Löwenstein painted and drew. His early works reflected the influence of cubism, and his subsequent creations evolved towards abstraction, although his personal style was on the border between the two. In 1936, Fédor joined the Salon des Surindépendants, an association of artists who no longer wanted an admission jury and questioned the restrictions imposed by the new regulations of the Salon des Indépendants of 1924.

Figure 3. The cover of the catalog from the 2014 exhibit at the Musée des Beaux-arts that displayed Fédor Löwenstein’s three “martyred” paintings

Fédor Löwenstein is often referred to as a Czechoslovakian painter because his father’s family was from there. The Munich Agreement concluded on the 30^th of September 1938, provided for the German annexation of land on the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany called the Sudetenland, where more than three million, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. Undoubtedly the signing of this agreement in the city where Fédor was born and involving the country where his father’s family originated inspired him to paint one of his iconic works, “La Chute,” “The Fall.” As the Bordeaux exhibit catalog notes, “The composition and iconographic vocabulary of the work are reminiscent of the convulsed and screaming silhouettes of Picasso’s Guernica. . .”

When France entered the war on the 3^rd of September 1939, Löwenstein, like many artists, left Paris. As a foreigner, he had to hide to escape the exclusion laws. Briefly, some background on this. During the interwar period, France was one of the more liberal countries in welcoming Jews, many of them from eastern Europe. However, in the wake of a significant influx of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, the French government began to reassess their “open-door” policy. By 1939 the authorities had imposed strict limitations on immigration and set up several internment and detention camps for refugees, such as Gurs and Rivesaltes, in southern France. Various of my German ancestors got caught up in these detentions.

In the case of Fédor, however, he went to Mirmande in the Drôme Valley, more than 400 miles south of Paris, on the advice of a fellow artist, a place he’d previously stayed in 1935 and 1938. At the time, Miramande was a village in ruins that became a refuge for many Parisian artists of foreign origin. All seemed to lead a peaceful existence there except for the difficulties obtaining art supplies. In any case, sometime in May 1940, Fédor left Miramande for Paris to select works of art to be shipped to a gallery in New York City via the port of Bordeaux. These works would eventually be seized there in December 1940 by the Nazi authorities.

Bordeaux is located in Aquitaine, a historical region in southwestern France. Quoting from the exhibit catalog: “Considered a sensitive and strategic coastal area, the Atlantic coastline was governed in a special way by the army, and access to it was forbidden. Very quickly, the military authorities blocked the shipment of all goods then leaving the port of Bordeaux. December 5 [1940] seems to have been the date of an important seizure operation by the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg), two sets of goods on their way out were confiscated.” This included Fédor Löwenstein’s consignment of works destined for America.

A little more history. German forces invaded France on May 10, 1940, and by June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany that went into effect on June 25, 1940. Under the terms of the armistice, Germany annexed the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and occupied the remainder of northern and western France. However, southern and eastern France remained unoccupied until November 1942. There a French collaborationist government, referred to as the Vichy Regime, governed. However, the suppression of the demarcation line in November 1942 caused the artist colony gathered in Miramande to break up. From then on, it was the French Resistance network that protected the refugees of Miramande, allowing many Jewish painters to escape.

By the fall of 1943, Fédor was already ill and traveled to Paris under a false identity to consult a specialist at the Curie Institute, though his disease was not diagnosed. His mastery of the French language, his support network, and his discretion about his religion were undoubtedly responsible for his survival during the Nazi occupation. Shortly after the war on the 4^th of August 1946 he was hospitalized and died a few days later of Hodgkin Lymphoma in Nice.

The 2014 exhibit at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Bordeaux (livret_lowenstein.pdf (musba-bordeaux.fr) was prompted by the rediscovery of three looted works of art, entitled “Landscape (Composition (Paysage)) (Figure 4),” “The Poplars (Les Peupliers),” and “The Trees (Arbres)” painted by Fédor Löwenstein that had been confiscated by the Nazis. As previously mentioned, the three works displayed were part of a consignment that F. Loevenstein, as Fédor signed his works, tried to send to an American gallery in New York. Seized at the port of Bordeaux in December 1940, they were sent to the Jeu de Paume in Paris, to be stored in the so-called “Salle des Martyrs,” “Martyrs Room” (Figure 5), a chamber to which works in a style repudiated by the aesthetics of the Third Reich, were relegated. It was only at the end of 2010 that the connection between these works that were held at the Musée National d’Art Moderne housed at the Centre Pompidou and the Löwenstein seizure at Hanger H in the port of Bordeaux was made.

Figure 4. Fédor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Landscape (Composition)”

Figure 5. The so-called “Salle des Martyrs,” “Martyrs Room,” at the Jeu de Paume in Paris; Löwenstein’s painting “Landscape” is circled (Anonymous 1940. Archive from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Researchers Alain Prévet, Thierry Bajou, Edouard Vasseur, along with the curator of the Bordeaux exhibit Mme. Florence Saragoza, about whom more will be said below, identified the paintings. They accomplished this using two negatives preserved in the Archives of the National Museums that showed views of the Salle des Martyrs of the Jeu de Paume. The researchers undertook detailed digitization of these negatives, painting by painting, and reconciled this with data that had been recorded by Rose Valland, then curatorial attaché at the Jeu de Paume. (Figure 6) In the list that Rose Valland had drawn up in March 1942, she listed eleven works—six watercolors being grouped together in one lot—that had been stolen from Fédor Löwenstein. At least two of the artist’s paintings are visible in one of the photographs taken of the Salle des Martyrs.

Figure 6. Rose Valland, curatorial attaché at the Jeu de Paume, in the Martyrs Room

The Salle des Martyrs of the Jeu de Paume became the central repository of the works of art confiscated in France by the Nazi services, the contents of which were made available to the ERR, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce). The ERR was one of the primary Nazi Party organizations dedicated to appropriating cultural property during WWII. It was led by the ideological henchman of the Nazi Party Alfred Rosenberg, from within the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs. Between 1940 and 1945, the ERR operated in France, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, and on the territory of the Soviet Union.

The Löwenstein works mentioned by Rose Valland and rediscovered in 2010 had also been catalogued by the ERR agents. They were listed under ERR file numbers Löwenstein 4 (Landscape), Löwenstein 15 (The Poplars), and Löwenstein 19 (The Trees). Following the war, the works were kept at the Musée National d’Art Moderne. The researcher Alain Prévet previously mentioned involved in the identification of the Löwenstein works has shown that the works were inventoried in 1973 as coming from an anonymous donation. The Bordeaux catalog notes the following:

“According to the minutes of the session of the Commission des Musées Nationaux of December 6, 1973, this ‘donation’ was in fact a regularization of artistic goods that had been ‘lying around’ in the Louvre; works that had ‘remained unclaimed, some of them for forty years,’ in a storeroom of the national museum. Because of the lack of knowledge of the real provenance of these works, it was decided to register them as ‘anonymous gifts’. . . works that had been deposited in the Louvre during the Occupation, following the Nazi spoliations, were . . . part of this collection. . .”

As the Bordeaux exhibit catalog notes, Löwenstein’s works, which are conserved to this day at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou “. . .bear the stigma of their aesthetic condemnation: a large red cross indicating that they were among others destined to be discarded. The files drawn up by the ERR bear the mention vernichtet, ‘destroyed’. . .The curator at the Jeu de Paume, Rose Valland, confirms this fatal destiny on July 20, 1943: ‘Scholz and his team continue to choose from among the paintings in the Louvre’s escrow and stab the paintings they do not want to keep. This is how they destroyed almost all of Masson’s works, all of Dali’s. The paintings in the Löwenstein, Esmont (sic), M[ichel]-G[eorges] Michel collections are almost all shredded (…)’’. . . On July 23, she added: ‘The paintings massacred in the Louvre’s sequestration were brought back to the Jeu de Paume. Five or six hundred were burned under German surveillance in the museum garden from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.. . .’” That Löwenstein’s three paintings escaped destruction is astonishing and is probably due to the fact they were classified as “paintings of lesser importance.”

Contained within the materials on the Löwenstein exhibit was the name of the curator who organized the show, Mme. Florence Saragoza, previously mentioned as one of the people involved in identifying Fédor’s works from the negatives of the Salle des Martyrs.

Intriguingly, also included within the Bordeaux museum’s promotional materials was the following statement in French:

“Si près de soixante-dix ans après la fin du conflit, de nombreux cas de restitution d’objets d’art restent en attente, trois d’entre eux sont désormais sortis de l’ombre et attendant maintenant l’identification des ayants droit de Wilhelm Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) pour être remis à leurs propriétaires légitimes.”

Translated :

“While nearly seventy years after the end of the conflict, many cases of art object restitution remain pending, three have now emerged from the shadows and are now awaiting the identification of the rightful owners of Wilhelm Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) to be returned to their rightful owners.”

This is a significant “concession.” Oftentimes, heirs of Jews whose works were either confiscated by the Nazis or whose sale was forced at a deeply discounted price and/or that eventually and illicitly wound up in museums spend years litigating their cases against these museums or private owners. The fact that the France Government’s Premier Ministre’s Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation or “CIVS” acknowledged that it was looking for the rightful heirs of goods taken illegally by the Nazis suggested the process of receiving compensation or acquiring possession could theoretically be short-circuited.

As I explained in detail in Post 105, I was able to establish contact with Mme. Florence Saragoza (Figure 7) who was literally brought to tears to learn that someone from Fédor Löwenstein’s family still exists. Florence, who I hold in the very, very highest esteem helped me file a claim in 2014 with the CIVS for compensation on behalf of my family; this involved requesting compensation for 25 pieces of art seized and/or destroyed.

For orientation, my father and Fédor were first cousins (Figure 8), so I would be Fédor’s first cousin once removed. Being intimately acquainted with my family tree and knowing that neither Fédor nor his two siblings ever had any children, I quickly realized I’m his closest surviving blood relative. Notwithstanding this fact, as I deeply lamented in Post 105, when the CIVS finally rendered their decision in June 2021, they refused to acknowledge I had any rights to compensation for the destruction and confiscation of Fédor’s artworks. Suffice it to say, because France is ruled by the principles of civil law rather than common law, my rights have been supplanted by Fédor’s siblings, who are obviously no longer alive, or by the heirs named in his sibling’s wills. The living heirs are referred to as “universal legatees,” and their rights according to French law supersede my own. That said, there is still some gray area based on which a French lawyer I’ve hired is contesting the decision. Stay tuned for further updates.

Figure 8. Heinz Löwenstein (middle) with my parents in Israel in 1973

Following their determination in 2021, the CIVS notified me that one of Fédor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Composition” had been shipped to the Jewish Museum of New York for an exhibit entitled “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art,” scheduled to run between August 20, 2021, and January 9, 2022. This was one of the paintings I had filed a claim for with the CIVS. Even though I’d been denied restitution by the French Minister of Culture, I took an avid interest in how the CIVS would handle the process going forward. For this reason, I ordered the exhibition catalog which, during Covid, took many months to arrive.

Tucked into the book was a surprising picture labeled as having been taken in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]. This is the town where my father and many of his immediate family were born and where the family business, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, operated through three generations. The photo shows crates containing thousands of books. According to the caption, in 1943 the Nazis established a research and sorting operation for plundered libraries in Ratibor. Eventually more than two million books were transported there. The photograph was included in the photo records of the Offenbach Archival Depot. (Figure 9) The Depot was a central collecting point in the American Sector of Germany for books, manuscripts and archival materials looted, confiscated, or taken by the German army or Nazi government from the occupied countries during World War II.

Figure 9. Post-WWII photo showing crates of books looted by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and shipped to Ratibor for sorting (photo from the National Archives Catalog “Photographs of the Operations of the Offenbach Archival Depot”)

The relocation of the ERR’s Book Control Center (Buchleitstelle) from Berlin to Ratibor in mid-1943 was prompted by the increased Allied bombing of Berlin, and a desire by the Nazis to save the books, at least until they’d had time to sort and save those they could use for propaganda. More on this below.

While I’d previously been unaware how my father’s hometown had been used during the war, Patricia Kennedy Grimstead, an academic from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, has written extensively on the subject. In a seminal paper entitled “Roads to Ratibor: Library and Archival Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg” she goes into great detail on her findings. According to Grimstead, the ERR Silesian research center in Ratibor “. . .was the recipient of archives and books the Nazis plundered as part of a vast ideological, political, and cultural policy. Unlike art, archival and library seizures were not for display, prestige, or profit. If they bolstered Hitler’s imperial pretensions or exposed the evils of ‘Bolshevism,’ then by all means they should be sought. . .Specialists catalogued, analyzed, and preserved the materials, treating them not only as the heritage of ‘enemies of the Reich’ but as raw material for propaganda for ‘operational’ use’” Books that did not meet these criteria were burned in spectacular bonfires or sent to pulping factories. (p. 391)

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, in a section on “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: A Policy of Plunder,” in January 1940 Hitler informed all offices of the Nazi Part that Alfred Rosenberg, head of the ERR, “. . .should be assisted in assembling a library for the planned new educational and research institute of the Party, the Hohe School, to be located at the Chiemsee in Bavaria. The library would contain 500,000 volumes. . .Preparations for the Hohe School also included other branches within the Reich, such as a ‘Center for Research on the Jewish Question’ in Frankfurt.”

The Jewish Museum exhibit catalog emphasizes this same point: “The segregation of Jews was enforced in a variety of ways. One distinctive strategy was to treat Jewish culture as the subject of historical inquiry, much as one might study a rare but obsolete specimen. Hitler called this an ‘anti-Semitism of reason,’ or ‘scientific anti-Semitism,’ which explicitly identified Jews in racial terms, rather than by religious affiliation. By the late 1930s research centers, institutes, and university departments had been founded throughout Germany and Austria to accommodate this burgeoning field and to inspire looting of works that were to be ‘saved’ expressly for the purpose of spurious academic research. Prominent among these was Alfred Rosenberg’s Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question (IEJ). It housed an estimated five hundred thousand books and manuscripts stolen from synagogues, Masonic temples, and private collections. Key to his mission was to set up a great Nazi university on the Chiemsee, in Bavaria, from the spoils of his plunder, including masterworks of both art and literature that would be instrumental in forming the curriculum.” (p. 54)

In this lengthy post, I reviewed and augmented what I had previously discussed in Post 105 regarding my failed attempt to obtain restitution on behalf of my family for paintings seized by the Nazi’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) from my father’s first cousin. In the process, I learned more about this agency’s role in plundering books that wound up in Ratibor where my father was born. Following the capitulation of Ratibor at the end of WWII, many of the books confiscated by the Nazis in Western Europe were later moved by the Soviets to Minsk, capital of Soviet Belorussia. To this day, an estimated half a million of these books have not been returned to their countries of origin and are referred to as “twice plundered” books.

REFERENCES

Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art. 20 Aug. 2021-9 Jan. 2022, Jewish Museum, New York.

Alexander, Darsie & Sam Sackeroff. Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art. Yale University Press, 2021.

“Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: A Policy of Plunder.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/offenbach-archival-depot/einsatzstab-reichsleiter-rosenberg-a-policy-of-plunder

Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946), trois œuvres martyres. 15 May-24 Aug. 2014, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux.

“France.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/france

Grimstead, Patricia Kennedy. “Roads to Ratibor: Library and Archival Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Winter 2005, pp. 390-458.

Musée des Beaux-arts de Bordeaux. Fédor Löwenstein, destin tragique d’un élève d’André Lhote.

Photographs of the Operations of the Offenbach Archival Depot. United States National Archive, 541611, https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/541611?availableOnline=true&typeOfMaterials=Photographs%20and%20other%20Graphic%20Materials

“Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce.” Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsleiter_Rosenberg_Taskforce

POST 46: WARTIME MEMORIES OF MY HALF-JEWISH COUSIN, AGNES STIEDA NÉE VOGEL

MilitarybGerman Note: This post relates some wartime memories of my German-born third cousin who is half-Jewish.

Figure 1. Painting of Agnes Stieda née Vogel, granddaughter of Ernst and Margarethe Neisser, who comes from a family of fifth-generation musicians

Figure 2. Margarethe “Gretel” Neisser née Pauly (1876-1941), in the early 1890’s, Agnes Stieda’s grandmother who read poetry to her as a child

I first introduced my third cousin, Agnes Stieda née Vogel (Figure 1), to readers in the previous Blog post (Post 45). She is the granddaughter of one of my Pauly relatives, Margarethe Neisser née Pauly (Figure 2), one of Josef and Rosalie Pauly’s daughters; Margarethe predeceased by less than a year her husband, Dr. Ernst Neisser (Figure 3), who along with his cousin committed suicide in Berlin on October 4, 1942, rather than be deported to a concentration camp.

Figure 3. Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942), in the early-to-mid 1890’s, Agnes Stieda’s grandfather with whom she was very close

Release of my previous post prompted Agnes to put down in writing memories of her wartime years, fulfilling a request from her children. Agnes graciously shared these recollections with me and was open to the idea of turning them into a Blog post. What follows is Agnes’ firsthand account of some wartime memories in Germany, including a few footnotes to provide a historic and geographic context for her tale.

Briefly, some backdrop. Agnes was born in May 1927 at the municipal hospital in Stettin, Germany [today: Szczecin, Poland] where her grandfather, Dr. Ernst Neisser, was the Director. She lived in various places growing up, including two-and-a-half years in Kassel, Germany [northern Hesse, Germany], then three years in Switzerland before her parents eventually settled in the small Lower Silesian village of Baitzen, Germany [today: Byczen, Poland], not far from the German-Czechoslovak border; she attended boarding school in the not-too-distant German town of Gnadenfrei (i.e., 27km or 17 miles north-northwest of Baitzen), known before 1928 as Ober-Peilau [today: Piława Górna, Poland]. Gnadenfrei/Ober-Peilau (Figure 4) was for many years “the longest village in Germany,” because it stretched for several miles along a brook, the Peile River. Piława Górna is 54km or 34 miles south of the regional capital of Wrocław [German: Breslau].

Figure 4. 1893 map of Silesia with Gnadenfrei and Peilau circled, once referred to as “the longest village in Germany”

In 1945, after WWII, Gnadenfrei was transferred from Germany to Poland. Today, it is in Dzierżoniów County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in southwestern Poland, about 10km (6 miles) southeast of Dzierżoniów, Poland [formerly Reichenbach, Germany]; the latter is located at the foot of the Owl Mountains [German: Eulengebirge], a mountain range of the Central Sudetes, also known as the Sudeten after their German name. The view from Agnes’s parents’ living room was of these mountains, a place she often hiked.

As mentioned, Gnadenfrei and Baitzen were only a short distance from the border with then-Czechoslovakia, and Baitzen was located along the main road that led there; the areas along the border with Germany were predominantly inhabited by German-speaking people, and during the interwar period, these native German-speaking regions within Czechoslovakia were referred to as the “Sudetenland.” (Figure 5)

Figure 5. The Sudetenland in 1944, a swath of then-western Czechoslovakia, once inhabited mainly by German speakers; the circled area named “Braunau” was the region of Czechoslovakia closest to German Silesia where Gnadenfrei/Peilau was located

Students of history will recall the Munich Agreement, or the “Munich Betrayal” as the Czechs refer to it; this was an agreement between France and Nazi Germany that France would not provide military assistance to Czechoslovakia in the upcoming German occupation of the Sudetenland, effectively dishonoring the French-Czechoslovak alliance and allowing Nazi Germany’s annexation of the area, a region of western Czechoslovakia inhabited mainly by German speakers (i.e., 3.67 million inhabitants including some 2.9 million Germans). Adolf Hitler announced it was his last territorial claim in Europe, and the choice seemed to be between war and appeasement. An emergency meeting of the main European powers – not including the Soviet Union, an ally to both France and Czechoslovakia – took place in Munich, Germany, on 29-30 September 1938. An agreement was quickly reached on Hitler’s terms. It was signed by the top leaders of Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference. Between October 1^st and 10^th, 1938, the German Wehrmacht occupied the Sudetenland.

With this brief background, what follows is Agnes’ story. Numbers in parentheses correspond to my footnotes at the end of the narrative.

“When WWII started with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, I was in a Moravian-run boarding school in Gnadenfrei. When we heard the news on the radio, all the teachers started crying, a scary sight for us pupils. Only one younger teacher was happy—her home was in Danzig, a city in the Polish ‘corridor,’ which meant that it once again became German. I remember German Wehrmacht soldiers marching into Czechoslovakia, day and night, along the road on which my parents lived in Baitzen, Germany (Figure 6), though this may be a memory of when the Germans invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia earlier that same year, in March 1939. We were only 20km (12 miles) from the border with Czechoslovakia.

Figure 6. Detailed map showing location of Baitzen [today: Byczen, Poland] in relation to Kamenz [today: Kamieniec Zabkowicki, Poland] where nearest train station was located

There was a Nazi expression I often heard before the war, ‘Heim ins Reich,’ meaning ‘back home to the Reich.’ [1] This was the beginning of what was to come. This expression, coming from my parents, I never forgot.

I stayed at an all-girls boarding school in Gnadenfrei until I was 15 years old. Only later did I learn that the Director of the school had been sent multiple questionnaires asking whether any of her girls there had a Jewish background, which the Director threw unanswered into the garbage, a real act of courage. The Director and the students all had to salute the Nazi flag every morning, raising their arms and saying, ‘Heil Hitler”; once I raised my left arm and was reprimanded for it by the Hitler Youth leader. Although I was well-aware of my Jewish background, my mother’s Neisser family had long-ago converted to Christianity at a time when Germany let Jews convert. Nonetheless, for the Nazi Regime it was all about race, not religion.

Figure 7. Grave of Konrad von Czettritz/Neuhaus (1890-1946), buried in the Lommel German Military Cemetery in Limburg, Belgium (photo courtesy of Bernhard von Bronkhorst)

I had a very close friend in the boarding school in Gnadenfrei, Karin, who was the daughter of landowning Silesian aristocrats, the von Czettritz/Neuhaus family. (Figure 7) I was often a guest at their house and spent the summer holidays in their home in Reichenbach. I saw my parents during the Christmas and Easter holidays. Karin commuted everyday by train from Reichenbach to Gnadenfrei to attend school there but was never a boarder. Sadly, Karin died of typhoid when she was 16, and my parents would not allow me to attend her funeral, afraid I would endanger her parents’ safety. This was a very bitter pill to swallow because of all the time I had spent with her and her family.

I remember being drafted into the ‘Jungmädchen’ [2], then into the B.D.M. [3]. We were required to pledge our personal allegiance to Hitler. I just put my free hand behind my back and stretched my fingers out, meaning the oath went in and out again of my consciousness. . .I thought it was rather a lark.

By 1942, my poor directors in both school and dormitory could no longer keep me, so from one day to the next, my years in Gnadenfrei were terminated and I returned to my parents’ home in Baitzen. The worst thing during the war years is that the brothers and fathers of many of my girlfriends were drafted into Hitler’s army, and died on the Front. Upon learning of their father’s or brother’s deaths, my girlfriends cried, and we, their friends, lay beside them in bed and tried to comfort them. I tear up even now thinking how awful this was for them and their families. To this day, I don’t know what happened to some of my girlfriends. After 1945, when that part of Germany became Polish, we had a ‘round letter’ that circulated twice a year with addresses of our schoolmates, but from a few we never heard from.

While we lived in Silesia, we would hear the Russian bombers flying overhead, but, living in the countryside, we never heard a bomb fall. We had food rations, but the real starvation came after 1945, when we had fled to Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin under Russian occupation.

Back to 1942. By the time I left school, ‘gymnasiums,’ schools which prepared you for university, were long closed to Jews and half-Jews. So, I did a lot of different things until I entered a gymnasium in Potsdam after the Nazi collapse to catch-up on my lost school years. My father could not work in his field as an art historian but managed to find a job with a Prince from the German aristocracy, I think a nephew or cousin of the last German Kaiser, who owned a large castle in Silesia; he gave him a job as a bookkeeper.

Later, the Russians threw us out of the house where we lived as refugees in Potsdam following Russian occupation of the area; we ended up living in a row house with a Frau von Mandelsloh and her husband, the sister and brother-in-law of my father’s former boss from Silesia. . .Frau von Mandelsloh was a veritable ‘angel.’

For about a year during the war, I was an au pair for a pastor and his wife who needed a housemaid for their two young children. During this time, we went back-and-forth between Potsdam and Silesia, living in both places. Obviously, as the war went on, anyone of Jewish ancestry was in more and more danger. Once, I remember, the Gestapo came to our small village. The mayor called us by telephone, which placed him in great danger, and warned us that we should disappear until everything was clear again. Can you imagine, the mayor calling?! Promptly, my mother and I trudged to the railway station in Kamenz [today: Kamieniec, Poland] (Figure 6) a half-hour’s walk away, through the freezing weather and caught the first train to Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], where we had relatives.

My father and many older or injured people were the last ones drafted to hold the Eastern Front line by digging ditches, etc. My father had had his thumb shot off during WWI and spent nine months in a field hospital; he never recovered the use of his left hand, unable to grip anything, but this saved him from being drafted into the German Army. During the Nazi era, they honored those who’d been wounded during WWI.

Except for the Gestapo incidence, the Nazis left us alone mostly. We think that a young woman who lived in the same house denounced us. When the Gestapo came to my parents’ house, they removed books by Martin Niemöller [4], one of the founding members of the Confessing Church [5], which was known for opposing the Third Reich; one of their prominent members, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was incarcerated and killed by the Nazis.

In Breslau, my father’s brother was exempt from the military because he was a Director of a large brewery, an important man who owned a large apartment with spare rooms. He could take me in but not my Jewish mother. She found refuge in the tiny apartment of a distant relative sleeping in an armchair.

In 1942, the Nazi Regime went quickly to work on their ‘Final Solution,’ as they called it. They gathered all non-Aryans and ordered them to report for deportation. My grandmother had already died a year before [1941] but my grandfather, his cousin, and many other relatives were ordered to register. Knowing what was coming, they instead took their own lives. My mother [Suse Vogel née Neisser] wrote about this, and her memoirs can be found on the Internet, but only in German; they are really in need of translation into English.

Back to the war. I had never experienced an air-raid but that was to come. Back in Silesia, I worked for a farmer from morning to night and loved that job. It was strenuous work, but being outside all day I was carefree, and never thought much about not being in school.

My grandfather, to whom I was very close, was still alive at the time. I have a very distinct childhood memory of being in his apartment in 1941 in Berlin when he learned of my grandmother’s death, of him standing by a window with tears running down his face; in all the years, I’ve never forgotten this image. I learned about my grandfather’s death when my parents sent me his obituary but found out only later why he had died. Of my grandmother’s sisters and their spouses who also committed suicide, I continue to learn about them even today. My dear parents tried to protect me from the Nazi horrors as much as they could and kept me innocent and naïve for a long time. When it became obvious that Germany would lose the war, Nazi rules became even stricter.

After one finished the B.D.M., every young girl was drafted and sent East to ‘defend’ the Fatherland. I was no exception. My mother, however, was unwilling to accept these circumstances and asked the advice of a doctor friend, aptly named Dr. Freund [German ‘freund’=friend]. He wrote a document for the authorities stating that I had streptococcus that had caused a heart valve disease. Streptococcus is so contagious it did the trick of my not being drafted. But I had to go to many clinics in Breslau to have my heart valve disease diagnosed; of course, the doctors could not find it because I was perfectly healthy. This strep was so indoctrinated into me that for years I was convinced I really had it.

In most ways the Hitler regime was very organized, but in others it was chaotic, and things were overlooked. Our wonderful neighbors in Silesia were very worried about my mother and me, more on account of the rapidly approaching Russian and Polish armies than the Nazis. Their newly-married daughter begged us to come with her and her parents, whom she also sought to protect, deep into the Silesian mountains where her husband’s parents owned a butcher shop and a restaurant in the small town of Lichtenwalde [today: Poreba, Poland] (Figure 8); the daughter’s husband was at the Front. We knew lots of wonderful and courageous people. I met only two fervent Nazis, one was my father’s own nephew, who, despite his fanatic beliefs, never denounced us. Still, he suggested my mother divorce my father, and, worse, urged her to commit suicide; my father was enraged with his nephew. When we left for the mountains, we could only bring one pack with us. Upon our arrival there, we found other people who’d fled from the heavy bombing in west German cities, notably Berlin.

Figure 8. Detailed map showing location of Lichtenwalde [today: Poreba, Poland] the mountain village where Agnes and her mother took refuge with the family of neighbors from Baitzen; Seitendorf to the south is a town Agnes remembered having passed through

My mother had tried to reach my father in his Unit but had no success. Since we had fled our home [Baitzen], my father had no way to connect with us. My mother’s thoughts were entirely focused on how we could reconnect. My father was responsible for bringing his Unit’s mail to the train, and when he noticed the train was headed to Berlin, he took that opportunity to jump onboard and go AWOL, hoping to find us when he arrived in Potsdam; we had always found shelter there in the apartment of the mother of one my mother’s good friends. By going AWOL, my father had taken a huge risk since deserters were shot on sight. But he was not discovered and entered Berlin which was aflame. I’ve never understood how my mother found out where my father was.

My mother and I took literally the last train leaving Silesia, which was already overcrowded with German refugees. My mother made it on the train, but I made it only to the running board. People, seeing we would be separated, lifted me up and shoved me in; despite the incredible chaos, they helped us find one another. Now came the nail-biting part of the journey, hoping my Jewish mother would not be discovered. Fortunately, she did not have to wear the Star of David [6]. . . Near Berlin the train stopped because it was being shot at from above, although not bombed. So, we entered Berlin, the burning images still vivid in my memory. And, there stood my father, waiting for us at the Potsdam train station. My mother and I, who had never quarreled before, argued about who would be the first to hug my father. I relented and gave her that privilege. I think this was the most decisive and happy moment of our lives.

On that very first night, there was a terrible air-raid that entirely flattened Potsdam. It was my first experience with bombings. Finally, the sirens sounded telling us it was safe to leave the air-raid shelter. Upon reaching street-level, we walked to one of the main arteries which was entirely engulfed in flames on both sides of the street with a strong wind blowing. . .we did not yet know most of the city had been destroyed. When the planes came the following night to finish the job, I remember sitting in my mother’s lap so scared I could not control my trembling. The next day or the day after that, my father said, ‘we cannot remain here, or we will be killed.’ We had a friend who lived in the country, so we loaded our backpacks and left Potsdam.

I don’t remember how many hours or even days before the Reich crumbled. I can’t even remember any celebration, because right away came, first the Polish soldiers, then the Russians, with their built-up hatred, bent on revenge for all the German Army had done to them. Fortunately, neither my mother nor I was raped, but in both cases, it was a close call.

But I better stop here because I try to erase these terrible memories.”

Figure 9. 1893 map of Silesia with all the places circled near and where Agnes lived in Silesia before and during WWII

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The “Heim ins Reich” was a foreign policy pursued by Adolf Hitler during World War II, beginning in 1938. The aim of Hitler’s initiative was to convince all Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) who were living outside Nazi Germany that they should strive to bring these regions “home” into Greater Germany, but also, relocate from territories that were not under German control, following the conquest of Poland in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet pact. The Heim ins Reich manifesto targeted areas ceded in Versailles to the newly reborn nation of Poland, as well as other areas that were inhabited by significant German populations such as the Sudetenland, Danzig, and the south-eastern and north-eastern regions of Europe after October 6, 1939.

[2] The Jungmädelbund (“Young Girls’ League”) was one of the original two sections of the “League of German Girls” or “Band of German Maidens” [German: Bund Deutscher Mädel, abbreviated as BDM], the girls’ wing of the Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. The Young Girls’ League was for girls aged 10 to 14, and the League proper for girls aged 14 to 18. In 1938, a third section was introduced, the BDM-Werk Glaube und Schönheit (“Faith and Beauty Society”), which was voluntary and open to girls between the ages of 17 and 21.

[3] B.D.M. (Bund Deutscher Mädel), as explained above, was the girls’ wing of Hitler Youth for girls aged 14 to 18.

[4] Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor, and was best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the 1930’s. While he was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, he became a co-founder of the “Confessing Church,” which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant Churches. Interestingly, while Martin Niemöller is by no means a household name, a poem he wrote, multiple variations of which exist, will be extremely familiar to many readers:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts has an engraving of one of the many poetic versions of Niemöller’s poem on location.

[5] “Confessing Church” [German: Bekennende Kirche], as explained above, opposed the Nazification of German Protestant Churches.

[6] Students of history will know that the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 banned marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and that Nazis designed policies to encourage intermarried couples to divorce. However, even among intermarried couples, there was a hierarchy, at least for a period. Families with an Aryan husband and baptized children were part of the category classified as “privileged mixed marriages”; they received better rations and the Jewish wife did not have to wear the yellow Star of David. Although Agnes was baptized, on her birth certificate it is written: “I bring to your attention that this child had Jewish ancestors.” So, even though Agnes was born in 1927, as readers well-know, anti-Semitism existed long before the Nazis came to power.