Note: Having been told of the existence of a photograph of Dr. Walter Lustig by Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of the book on Berlin’s Jewish Hospital that inexplicably survived the Nazi onslaught, in this postscript I describe how I managed to track down this image.
Regular followers may recall that while working on Post 110, I contacted Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis” to share some new information I had uncovered about the hospital’s wartime director, Dr. Walter Lustig. During our exchanges, Mr. Silver mentioned in passing that following the publication of his book in 2003, he’d attended a traveling exhibit in around 2007 on Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community. He recalled the exhibit was developed by students from the University of Potsdam who, while assembling materials, had uncovered a photograph of the elusive Dr. Walter Lustig, something Daniel Silver had been unable to find during his extensive research. He eventually obtained a copy of this image, although at the time I contacted him, he was unable to relocate it.
I write this postscript mostly as an example to readers who may find themselves in a similar predicament, wanting to obtain a photo or information about a widely known individual, such as Dr. Walter Lustig, that one has learned exists or instinctively thinks should exist. In my instance, I was armed only with information that a traveling exhibit had been put together by students from the University of Potsdam, located on the outskirts of Berlin, and set about trying to track down the image of Dr. Lustig I was told survives.
The obvious starting point was the University of Potsdam’s website to whom I sent two emails, followed up with phone calls by a friend and relative, respectively; in both instances I was advised to wait though nothing came of my patience. Next, through a contact form I found online for the still-in-existence Jüdisches-Krankenhaus, Jewish Hospital, I reached out to them hoping them might have a photo of Dr. Lustig. In this instance, I received the very gracious following reply:
“During the first half of the last century the hospital was still in the hands of the Jewish Community of Berlin. Only in the 1960s did the hospital become a foundation under civil law. Thus, we do not have any archival material from the time before. We suggest getting in touch with the Jewish Community of Berlin. They might still have documents in their archives from that time.”
The Jewish Hospital provided a link to the Jewish Community of Berlin, known in German as the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. I sent them an email in early February of this year, and as of this writing, have not received a reply.
Not yet quite willing to give up, I asked a different German cousin, a historian by training, if he could again try and contact the University of Potsdam, which I still believed was my best chance of tracking down the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig. I provided the background information, but before calling the university, my cousin did a Google query and stumbled upon a reference I’d failed to discover on my own that included a picture of the difficult-to-find Dr. Walter Lustig.
It turns out that as part of its Oral History Project, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum interviewed a Ms. Ruth Bileski Winterfield, a Forced Laborer during WWII who was compelled to work as a secretary for Dr. Lustig at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital from March 1943 onwards. Included as part of the documentary information related to Ruth Bileski, the St. Louis Holocaust Museum included a photo of Dr. Walter Lustig, whose provenance is the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum, New Synagogue Berlin Centrum Judaicum Foundation.
A little background explaining how Ruth Bileski wound up working for Dr. Lustig is relevant. As the “Aryanization” of Germany society ramped up during the Nazi era, among healthy Jews of employable age who chose to remain in Germany, increasing numbers of Jews were forced out of public employment and professions. As Daniel Silver notes, “Once unemployed, Jews were required to register with a special Jewish Labor Bureau and had to perform forced labor wherever they were assigned. By 1941, most able-bodied Jewish men and women, including teenagers, were at forced labor, primarily in the many war-related industrial plants in and around Berlin” (2003: 34)
While Ruth Bileski and her sister Eva were technically mischlinge, half-Jewish, under Nazi racial laws, they were treated as equivalent to full Jews, referred to as Geltungsjuden. Both were working at an I.G. Farben factory and were rounded up by the SS in the Fabrikaktion. To remind readers, the Fabrikaktion, literally “factory operation” or “factory raid,” took place in Berlin in February 1943 when Berlin Jews were picked up by the SS primarily at their places of work. Following their arrest Ruth and Eva were transferred to Rosenstrasse. Again, as a reminder, this was the site of what is called the Frauenprotest, literally “women’s protest” or “wives’ protest.” This is the name given to the successful demonstration in February and March 1943 by Aryan wives and relatives of detained Jewish spouses and part-Jewish children arrested in the Fabrikaktion, an action that eventually resulted in the interned Jews and half-Jews being released.
Upwards of 35,000 Berlin Jews were rounded up during the Fabrikaktion, most of whom were deported to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz and murdered there. The only ones who given a reprieve because of the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, a reprieve always intended by the Nazis to be temporary, were some 5-6,000 intermarried Jews and their offspring. Ruth and Eva Bileski were among this group.
During their detention at Rosenstrasse, a Gestapo officer came to the door one day looking for someone who could type. While Ruth Bileski had secretarial training, she chose to remain silent, but her sister Eva offered her up. She was taken out of the room and made to wait all day before being reincarcerated with no explanation. The following day the Gestapo repeated the process again looking for a typist; Ruth’s sister anew volunteered her against her wishes, but on this occasion, she was put to work typing lists of people who were being detained in the building. She typed for thirty-six straight hours before falling asleep at the typewriter. Following the completion of this odious task, she was questioned by a Gestapo office about her secretarial skills, and eventually offered up to Dr. Lustig as his secretary at the Jewish hospital. In no position to make demands, Ruth nonetheless told her jailers she would not go anywhere without her sister. To her surprise her sister was allowed to accompany her. (Silver 2003: 134-136) Like many Jews and half-Jews who were released following the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, Ruth and Eva Bileski survived the Nazi Holocaust. Readers interested in learning more about Ruth’s time at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital should listen or peruse the script of the oral interview the St. Louis Holocaust Museum conducted.
Not having obtained permission from either the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum or the St. Louis Holocaust Museum to use Dr. Walter Lustig’s image in this Blog post, I provide the link here so readers can view the photograph for themselves. As readers can observe, the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig shows him seated and dressed in a white laboratory coat. His distant cousin, Mr. Roger Lustig, whom I contacted while writing Post 110 thought no photos existed of Dr. Lustig because he was self-conscious of his short stature. Obviously, seated as he is, it is difficult to make out his height which may explain why he allowed this photo to be taken.
As a brief aside and conclusion, in Post 107, I mentioned that Ms. Kathy York née Powell’s grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, when Dr. Walter Lustig was the Director. Kathy thought letters from her grandmother’s experiences there might exist, but recent contact with one of her cousins who retains many of her family’s ancestral documents regrettably has not yet turned up these missives.
REFERENCE
Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Note: In the second part of Post 109, I discuss the broader historic context in which Johanna and Renate Bruck, wife and daughter of my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), recorded the daily happenings in their lives between January 1942 and December 1944. Regrettably, their “Tagebuch” does not encompass the final few months of the war in Berlin through the surrender of the city on May 2, 1945. Thus, the circumstances of any hardships Johanna and Renate may have suffered in this period at the hands of the Russians and the Allies are unknown to us. Like in years 1940 and 1941, Johanna and Renate’s lives are replete with social engagements (getting together with friends; attending movies, plays, and operas; dining out; shopping; clothes fittings; etc.), distractions (tap, tennis, violin lessons), Renate’s amorous liaisons, and, most remarkably, multiple trips. With a few notable exceptions, the war passes almost unnoticed. I do not dwell on Johanna and Renate’s personal lives except where it adds nuance and texture to their accounts or provides some temporal context. From a story-telling perspective, I explore developments in the war and other happenings that while not explicitly discussed in the diary must have weighed on Johanna and Renate’s minds.
As discussed in Post 109(1), in November and December 1941 Johanna Bruck transacted the exchange of her apartment in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] at Oranienstrasse 4, with one in Berlin occupied by a couple named the Günthers, located at Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Johanna physically relocated to Berlin in February 1942, followed several weeks later by Renate. Johanna used the intervening period to have the apartment completely refurbished and upgraded.
By September 1941 Johanna understood that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” had been or would be rejected. Given how prominent Dr. Walter Bruck (Figures 1-2) had been in Breslau during his lifetime and the certainty the Nazis knew he was “racially” Jewish and that his daughter was a mischling of the first degree may have been the impetus for Johanna to move her daughter to Berlin; after all, by 1938, Renate Bruck had already been expelled from the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, the private school for daughters from upper class families. Johanna must have felt the anonymity of a larger city afforded her daughter better protection.
My cousin Thomas Koch discovered an interesting thing when he examined the Berlin Address Books following Johanna and Renate’s move to Berlin. Johanna is not listed in the 1942 directory, though this may simply have been a function that her move occurred after the directory went to press. However, more mystifying is that she is not listed in the 1943 Berlin Address Book. There are several possible explanations: (1) sloppiness on the part of the publisher in updating the 1943 Address Book; (2) Johanna and Renate lived at Xantener Straße 24 but under the name of another person because of Renate’s racial status as a mischling. This possibility seems unlikely because it would have made obtaining ration cards very difficult and would have been contradictory to the openly, social lifestyle Johanna and Renate led. (3) Johanna unintentionally forgot to register properly; or (4) Johanna and Renate temporarily lived outside Berlin, which was in fact the case for a period in 1943-1944, which I will discuss below.
On May 4, 1942, Johanna makes one of the few entries suggesting the war may have started to impact the everyday lives of ordinary Germans, when she remarks, “Food very scarce!!!” While the scarcity of food is rarely mentioned again, the arrival of “care” packages from friends and relatives outside of Berlin is carefully noted throughout the diary suggesting Johanna and Renate depended on these.
In Post 109(1), I mentioned to readers that upon Renate’s arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts. However, neither Johanna nor Renate ever takes her compulsory schooling seriously; numerous instances of Renate missing school are noted. According to Renate’s lifelong friend, Ina Schaesberg, Renate acquired a special skill in arts and crafts that enabled her to make “very pretty and practical things from felt that sold well and brought in money.”
Renate departed Breslau accompanied by her mother on March 19, 1942, though Renate makes a point of noting that two days prior she had visited Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, at his luthier shop to say her goodbyes. (Figure 3) There was already a clear fondness between the two of them. It seems likely Renate and Matthias met at his shop while she was taking violin lessons there. According to Bettina Mehne, Matthias’s daughter by his second marriage, lessons were given not by Matthias himself but by his good friend, a man named “Kulenkampf.”
Regardless, immediately after Matthias’s arrival in Berlin in February 1943, he called Renate and they become inseparable until he was forced to enlist in the Wehrmacht towards the latter part of April 1943. Readers may recall from Post 108 that Matthias was found to have helped a Jewish detainee and friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, escape a Sammellager in Breslau, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, with his rucksack in hand. As punishment, the judge, a friend, forced him to join the army rather than let the Gestapo kill him as they had wanted to, figuring he would be killed anyway. Clearly, Matthias’s departure from Breslau, did not prevent the Wehrmacht from finding him there, so his relocation to Berlin was more likely related to his blossoming relationship with Renate than an attempt to avoid military conscription.
By around the 22nd of April 1943, Matthias was forced to present himself in Paris for induction into the German Army, but not without first talking to Johanna about his future with Renate according to an entry before his departure. It took me a while to work out that Renate and her mother referred to Matthias as “boy” throughout much of the diary, possibly because of his youthful demeanor or for some other unknown reason. He was clearly Renate’s primary love interest (Figure 4), though a man named “Gerhard” (surname unknown) was also vying for her affection at the time, a man her twin daughters claim was a love interest for years after the war following her marriage and divorce from Matthias.
Before backtracking and telling readers about some historic events of WWII I would have expected to be discussed in the Tagebuch, let me briefly tell followers what happened to Matthias following his enlistment. Renate received news of Matthias’s capture on October 12, 1943. He was evidently assigned to the Italian theater-of-war. The Allies landed in Sicily in around July 1943, and by September 1943 had invaded the Italian mainland. Matthias was captured by the Americans in Italy, but quickly turned over to the British and interned as a prisoner of war near Nottingham, England. Renate received her first letter from him dated the 27th of February 1944 about a month later, on the 26th of March 1944. I want to emphatically emphasize that Matthias was not a Nazi but was forced as punishment to enlist in the Wehrmacht because of the courage he had shown trying to help a Jew escape an internment camp in Breslau.
On her 17th birthday on the 16th of June 1943, Renate received a diamond ring. While there is no reason to think this was connected to Matthias, who was by then in the German Army, the day after receiving his first letter in March 1944 following his British internment, Renate celebrated what Johanna referred to as Renate’s “engagement day.” Might Matthias have proposed in his letter? Possibly.
At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces including Germany’s 6th Army and its foreign allies surrendered in Stalingrad following a brutal battle that had lasted five months, one week, and three days. There is nary any mention of this development during the war in Johanna’s diary. Nor is there any mention of the “Rosenstrasse Protest” that took place in Berlin during February and March 1943, which fundamentally affected Renate and other mischlinge. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and mischlinge who had been arrested and targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany. What started out with dozens, then hundreds of women protesting, eventually turned into thousands of women demonstrating in icy winter weather over seven days, until 1,700 Berlin Jews herded together into the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse near Alexanderplatz were freed. The Rosenstrasse protest is considered a significant event in German history as it was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. One can only imagine how much horror and misery might have been avoided had such protestations by Germans occurred much earlier. To my cousin Thomas Koch this is very personal since his grandmother and future mother were among the Rosenstrasse protestors, and his Jewish grandfather among those freed.
Let me turn now to an entry made by Renate on the 11th of May 1943, in which she noted that she would not be accepted in the Reich Labor Service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD. The Reich Labor Service was a major organization established in Nazi Germany to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarize the workforce, and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labor service, divided into separate sections for men and women. So called “half-breeds,” mischlinge, were not excluded from labor service. The mother of my cousin Thomas, like Renate also a mischling, was in the Reichsarbeitsdienst in 1940. Thus, it is a source of irritation to Thomas that Renate was somehow able to avoid the labor service. Were the conditions “tightened” for Renate through contacts Johanna had that “prevented” her from being accepted? Or was Renate’s non-acceptance intended to protect her from something or exclude her from something contrary to the rules? We may never know the answers to these questions.
Years ago, when I was still working with Thomas Koch trying to discover where Johanna and Renate Bruck had gone after they left Breslau, which we now know to have been in February-March 1942, Thomas shared with me an application that had been submitted by a woman named Ms. Edith Czeczatka to the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross in 1948. Ms. Czeczatka requested information on the whereabouts of Johanna and Renate and gave as their residential address in the town of Erfurt, Germany, Dammweg 9. (Figures 5a-b) I mentioned this in Post 83, even including a picture of the residential building where they lived. (Figure 6) Johanna and Renate’s association with Erfurt was a mystery until the discovery of their Tagebuch.
An entry on the 22nd of May 1943 explains why Renate accompanied by Johanna temporarily moved to Erfurt that year. That day, Renate was told to come for an interview at the employment office of “MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH”; she’d apparently applied for and been hired as a technical draftswoman beginning on June 1st. More on this company below. The company had offices in both Berlin and Erfurt, but Renate was required to report to Erfurt beginning on the 17th of June 1943 for training. Almost immediately, the girls that had been hired were given two months of paid vacation until the drawing rooms were readied. It is clear from the diary that Renate was permanently assigned to work in Erfurt.
Towards the beginning of September 1943, prior to moving to Erfurt, Johanna and Renate went to visit family and friends in Breslau, then spent a few days vacationing in Jannowitz, Silesia [today: Janowice Wielkie, Poland], before returning to Breslau, then leaving for Erfurt on September 12, 1943. For the period of her employment, Renate and her mother lived in Erfurt on weekdays, then returned to Berlin on weekends.
It appears that for at least a year until September 24, 1944, Johanna and Renate lived with a family called the “Hallers.” Then, on September 25, 1944, they moved within Erfurt into the house at Dammweg 9, previously mentioned, where the “Maulhardt” family also lived. Presumably, this was a boarding house the family owned.
Let me digress now and briefly discuss the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH that Renate worked for. MAKO was a company network owned by Max Kotzan, and the name was a combination of letters from his first and last name. The 1943 Berlin Address Book identified the various components of the business which included chemical-technical and metallurgical development; machine factories; and apparatus engineering and construction. Curious to get a better handle on what the company actually produced, I came upon an obscure reference which I found intriguing because it shed light on Germany’s efforts to develop solid fuel rockets, which might well have changed the trajectory of the war. Quoting briefly from a publication entitled “The V2 and the Russian and American Rocket Program” by Claus Reuter:
“More and more information is now surfacing telling of the launch of a ballistic missile powered by solid propellant near Arnstadt just before the war ended. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Arnstadt is a town in Thuringia, Germany, about 20 kilometers south of Erfurt. During the Second World War, it was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, mainly for Poles and Russians.]. Many believe it was this missile which was to carry a nuclear payload. The missile was developed in the top-secret think-tank installation at the Skoda factory under the control of the SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. . . .
. . . Most historians and experts say that because of the shortage of solid propellants the missile was never produced and that no nuclear program existed.
More and more eyewitness accounts surface telling us a different story, accounts which say the missile was launched successfully. Also, a photo surfaced showing a large missile being built at the MAKO factory in Rudesleben, Thuringia. It shows the Sonderrakete A-4 (Special Rocket A-4) for solid fuel. The launch took place nearby at one of the top-secret factories in Thuringia the Polte 2 plant. The plant was controlled by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler.
The MAKO plant specialized in the construction of pressure tanks and also produced equipment for the Luftwaffe, like drop tank, for the rocket program oxygen tanks for the V-1 and also mobile liquid oxygen transport tanks for the V-2 rocket batteries. The MAKO was owned by Maz Kotzan. Kotzan as a WWI flyer had close connections to Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet, both WWI pilots. The MAKO received the contracts from the RLM [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Aviation, “Reichsluftfahrtministerium,” abbreviated RLM]. Behind the Polte 2 plant Kotzan had erected two aircraft hangers and a landing strip.
Here personalities like SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler or Wernher von Braun arrived to visit some of the installations. In the MAKO and Polte 2 plants some of the top-secret developments were tested. It was here that the Americans found the top-secret radar-absorbing aircraft paint. The paint was immediately shipped to the U.S.”
I am obviously no rocket scientist, pardon the pun, so suffice it to say the advantage of a solid motor is that it can provide huge amounts of thrust, and is therefore used as a booster to make satellite launching rockets gain high initial velocity before using higher-efficient liquid motors to gain horizontal velocity above the densest part of the atmosphere. There seems little doubt that had the Nazis been able to master this technology and place fissile material atop a missile powered by solid fuel, at a minimum, the war would have dragged on and more misery and death occurred.
I will readily acknowledge to readers that I have veered quite a distance from Johanna and Renate’s diary, but this was primarily in the interest of drawing attention to the company for which Renate worked, which was obviously deeply involved in Germany’s arms development. There is virtually no mention in their diary of Johanna and Renate’s time in Erfurt, except for their continuing active social lives. However, it is safe to assume that part of their reticence to talk about Erfurt could be connected to statements of secrecy they were sworn to. Clearly, as a mischling Renate wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and it’s somewhat surprising the company even hired her given her status.
Evidently, by virtue of Renate’s amorous relationship with Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, she and Johanna had gotten to know Matthias’s parents, referred to as “Ma and Pa” in the diary and his sister “Lu,” short for Luzie. Matthias’s parents were Albert Eugen Mehne (b. 1883, Dresden) and Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel. Johanna and Renate regularly visited, received packages, and stayed in touch with them during Matthias’s wartime absence. While a reference I found states Albert Eugen Mehne moved to Gelsenkirchen, Germany around 1922 (Figure 7), which is about 500 miles due west of Breslau, Johanna and Renate always visited them in Breslau during the war, suggesting Matthias’s parents had returned there at some point.
Surprisingly, Johanna and Renate traveled quite extensively during the years 1942 through 1944. While there were periodic disruptions and delays on account of the war, amazingly the trains continued to run on a predictable schedule though often with significant delays. Among the places they stayed besides Berlin, Breslau, and Erfurt were the widely scattered towns of Friedrichroda (small town and health resort in Thuringia), Babelsberg, Potsdam, Jannowitz, Neuendorf and Kantreck in Pomerania bordering the Baltic Sea, and Hamburg. They clearly knew people in many of these places, but others were seemingly vacation destinations.
Not surprisingly, the war had an impact on the lives of Johanna and Renate, although this fact is rarely manifested in the diary. However, on the night of February 16, 1944, the Allies launched a major bomb attack against Berlin, and the following day Johanna was notified by teletype that “our apartment had suffered greatly.” Then, on February 18th, Johanna remarks “Our apartment—a field of rubble, quite terrible.” It does not become clear until an entry in the early part of May 1944 that Johanna and Renate’s apartment was still habitable.
It goes without saying there are dozens and dozens more entries in Johanna and Renate’s Tagebuch reflecting on the weather, taking umbrage in air raid shelters, Johanna being hospitalized, and much more. Readers should realize I’ve been very selective in the entries I’ve chosen to highlight to make this post engaging and more reflective of the wartime events that had to have impacted Johanna and Renate’s lives. My intent is merely to give followers a glimpse into the lives that my ancestors Johanna and Renate Bruck lived during WWII (Figure 8), and how surprisingly “normal” their existence seems to have been given the enormity of death and destruction that surrounded them.
