A few years ago, I donated a German passport to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, along with a description explaining the meaning of each entry. The passport belonged to my mother, and since I was a minor child when the passport was issued to her in May 1934, I was also included by name. While the explanations I appended provide some limited background information as well as facts surrounding our escape from Germany, they could not convey the real-life drama and the various crises associated with the passport. I am now the last person who is still able to recall the personal tragedies, along with the life-saving ending that my mother’s passport represents.
The visa information stamped into the passport is of particular interest. The first stamp is from the visa for my mother’s trip to Italy in 1936; but it fails to reflect the emotional concerns involved in the trip. She took it with her next-older sister, Else, who had become a widow even before Hitler came to power, after thugs in Nazi uniforms accosted her husband, Max. They suspected he was Jewish, and when that was confirmed, they killed him on the streets of Chemnitz. Else continued running her husband’s kitchenware store, and by 1934 she needed a break from the tension. They hoped this could be achieved by my mother taking her to Italy. While the trip to Italy appeared to be successful, it may have been the last happy time she knew. Ultimately, Else was able to save her two children. Her son, Fred, at age 18, escaped on his own, first to Italy and then to the United States, and her daughter, Ruth, at age 16 was evacuated on the Kindertransport to England, where she was interned as an “enemy alien” when the war broke out. But Else was unable to save herself and perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The most significant passport entry, though, is the visitor visa issued by the American Consulate in Breslau, authorizing my mother to visit the United States in October 1938. The request for a visitor visa was a subterfuge, since her real intent was to escape. My father had received a visitor visa to the United States one month earlier, and his intent was a visit, but with a mission. He wanted to find his distant relatives to secure an affidavit to support our immigration at a later time; his intentions were to return to Breslau once that was accomplished. It was only when the home situation changed—when the Gestapo came to our door looking for him with an order to have him report to Gestapo headquarters immediately upon his return—that my mother reluctantly realized that he could not return to Germany if he wanted to avoid arrest. And it was after the Gestapo visit that my mother realized we too had to escape—because later, a lady, an apparent Gestapo informant, came carrying an official order saying we must provide her with a bedroom in our apartment. This led to my mother’s visitor visa. It was not a given that she could get such a visa. If the authorities noticed that my father was already in the United States, the visa would not be issued. It would then be obvious that she was a refugee and not merely a visitor.
Luckily, the American consul did not associate any connection between the two separate visas. But the visa she received that day was only for her personal trip; it did not include me. Completely out of character, she returned to the consulate the next day and was able to bribe an official to add three words next to the visa. He wrote with pen the words: “with son Franz.” (Franz was my given name on my German birth certificate, and we changed it to Frank as I entered the United States.) This now permitted both of us to escape. It is obvious that my mother would never have left without me, and had these three words not appeared next to her visitor visa, she would not have been able to leave Germany at all.
When my mother returned home, she waived to me and said, “Let’s go for a walk,” which meant we had to discuss something that our informant should not hear. As soon as we were outside, she asked: “Should we go?” I knew what she meant, but it was not an easy question. I had all my friends here in Breslau. I was happy with my soccer team. I had just received a BMW bicycle on my Bar Mitzvah. I was doing well in my class in the Jewish private school. But I knew that we were not wanted in this country, and the smartest action I ever took in my life was when I said: “Let’s go!” A 13-year-old boy who does not want to leave his friends can clearly obstruct the decision to leave and stymy a prompt departure, but thankfully that was not my plan. Had we postponed our departure by one month, we would have been ensnared by the Crystal Night pogrom, making escape even more difficult. There were no countries willing to accommodate Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. After the war broke out in the fall of 1939, for all practical purposes, escape was ended. But the three words written in pen on my mother’s passport enabled us to escape. Without those three words, it could have led to a fatal ending for my family. On November 27, 1941, the last Jews in Breslau were evacuated to a field in Poland, where they were shot.
But the issuing of the visitor visa did not fully relieve my mother’s stress. We had to leave all of our belongings behind, since as visitors departing Germany, we were only allowed to take one suitcase and ten marks each. Before we left, my mother was able to arrange first-class passage on the Holland-America line and two weeks of upgraded hotel reservations in New York. But we could not otherwise use our savings and had to leave all the money behind.
The next stressful test was sneaking out of our apartment at 5 a.m., without awakening our Gestapo informant. We did that successfully. Thereafter, a quick trip to Berlin with a farewell to my mother’s father, who later succumbed in a concentration camp, and her oldest sister, who managed to escape with her family to Australia. That was the last time she ever saw all of them. The next stress was crossing the border out of Germany on the train to Holland; I could hear her sigh in relief when that occurred without a problem. But her stress would continue. All during our first-class ocean passage, which I enjoyed immensely, she was concerned about what would happen when we arrived in New York and had to process through Ellis Island.
She had heard about the potential interrogations. Could she lie if asked about her husband? If it was revealed that he was already in-country, would we be placed on the next boat to return to Germany? Since that would expose us as refugees could we no longer appear to have visitor status? And if that were to happen, what would occur when we arrived back in Breslau? That was too horrible to contemplate. No, the boat trip was not enjoyable for her. Yet again, our luck held. As we pulled into the harbor, there came an announcement: “First-class passengers are invited to pass through customs and may then embark.” All the worry had been for nothing; there was to be no Ellis Island. We could safely take our first steps onto America’s soil. We felt saved.
In retrospect, my mother was a hero. She acted when it was needed. She even broke the law and ensured my escape by bribing an official to add the critical three words. It was her action that saved our lives. But the stress involved took its toll; it undoubtedly was the cause of her fatal stroke at the early age of 62.
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