Over the Green Hill : A German Jewish title: Memoir, 1913-1943 author: Strauss, Lotte. publisher: Fordham University Press isbn10 | asin: 0823219194 print isbn13: 9780823219193 ebook isbn13: 9780585119144 language: English Strauss, Lotte, Jews--Germany--Berlin-- Biography, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-- subject Germany--Berlin--Personal narratives, Berlin (Germany)--Biography. publication date: 1999 lcc: DS135.G5S7713 1999eb ddc: 943/.155004924/0092 Strauss, Lotte, Jews--Germany--Berlin-- Biography, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-- subject: Germany--Berlin--Personal narratives, Berlin (Germany)--Biography. Page iii Over the Green Hill A German Jewish Memoir 1913-1943 by Lotte Strauss Fordham University Press New York 1999 Page iv Copyright © 1999 by Lotte Strauss All rights reserved. LC 99-33711 ISBN 0-8232-1919-4 (hardcover) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strauss, Lotte. [Ühber den grünen Hügel. English] Over the green hill : a German Jewish memoir, 1913- 1943 / by Lotte Strauss. p. cm. ISBN 0-8232-1919-4 1.-Strauss, Lotte. 2.-JewsGermanyBerlin Biography. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)GermanyBerlin Personal narratives. 4.-Berlin (Germany) Biography. I.-Title. DS135.G5S7713 1999 943'.155004924'0092dc21 [B] 99-33711 CIP Printed in the United States in America Page v In memory of Louis and Johanna Schloss my father and mother Ludwig and Ilse Schöneberg my uncle and aunt may eternal life be with them FOR THE DEAD AND THE LIVING WE MUST BEAR WITNESS Page vii Contents Preface ix 1. Childhood: Salzkotten and Wolfenbüttel, 1913-1920 1 2. Going to School: Wolfenbüttel, 1920-1933 18 3. Marriage, Emigration, Divorce: Berlin, Milan, Kladow, 1933-1938 38 4. The Outbreak of the War, Herbert, Forced Labor: Berlin, 1939-1942 41 5. The Deportation of My Parents, Flight from the Gestapo: Berlin, October 24, 1942 50 6. Hiding in Berlin: October 24, 1942-April 29, 1943 65 7. Our Helpers 139 8. Crossing the Border: Imprisoned and Interned in 141 Switzerland: May 1, 1943-July 1943 9. Sequelae: 1958; 1983-1990 169 Epilogue 180 Page ix Preface This book was begun as a letter to my daughter in 1993. I consider it natural that a young child should be protected from stories of horror that she cannot absorb and that might cause unnecessary anxieties. Anyhow, as Jane grew older and lived in our German Jewish environment, she heard enough and understood what had happened: she always knew of our and her Jewish identities. Herbert and I had married in Bern, Switzerland, in 1944 and had come to the United States in 1946. Janie (as she came to be called) was born six weeks after our arrival in New York. I named her after my motherJohanna. We had a happy and fulfilled life and were absorbed with bringing up Janie in our new freedom. We had to overcome the initial difficulties of immigration in the postwar world when U.S. soldiers returned home to begin families and start new careers. Living space was hard to find. At the beginning, we lived in genteel poverty, dictated in part by the poor salary a beginning college teacher earned at the time, and in part by Herbert's refusal to accept the assistance of a Jewish welfare organization. He wanted to do it all by himself. On a seasonal schedule, I worked in a millinery shop to augment our income. At one point, close friends of ours, Harold and Lenore Gray, put me in touch with the League of Women Voters of New York State, which maintained an office in New York City. Harold Gray was the chairman of the academic department of the Juilliard School of Music where Herbert taught at the time. It was a stroke of good luck for us, because the Grays adopted our small family as theirs. Their informality and humanity opened up an aspect of American life we had not known before. With them our enthusiasm for American civility really began. I bear them a lasting debt of gratitude. The LWVbefore any other feminist organizationfought for civil rights and the expansion of equality for all members of Page x society which I had missed in Germany and also in Switzerland, and so I found a new home in the League's pragmatic liberalism. From 1960 on, Herbert taught history at The City College of New York on a tenured professorial line. In 1982, I went with Herbert to Berlin, when he accepted an assignment at the Technische Universität (Technical University) of Berlin to found a Center for Research on Antisemitism. We stayed in Berlin until 1990. At first, these eight years were a harrowing time for me, but, through the work done at the Center, I learned to see our own personal story more in context with overall history; thus, I gained confidence to express in words what had only been pictures in my mind I carried around with me for such a long, long time. Finally, my hesitation to explain to my family and friends the total lawlessness and deprivation we had experienced vanished when we visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on its opening day in 1991. Its mottocut in stonesays, "For the dead and the living we must bear witness." In writing this book I obeyed my own impulses to save the past from oblivion, but I would not have begun without the encouragement of my friends over the years. I feel grateful for their persistent interest. Among them I owe special gratitude to the following: friends in the German American Women's Club in Berlin, especially to Dorothea von Hammerstein. They offered me a bridge between the cultures. In New York, our friend Arthur Tiedemann encouraged me in conversations over many months and shared his interest in and knowledge of contemporary history. Maria and Norman Marcus, New York, deeply empathized with my history and wanted to see it in print. Daphne Dennis helped me to produce a clear text through a series of revisions. Dr. Mary Beatrice Schulte, of Fordham University Press, edited the manuscript with personal involvement and understanding. Finally, the book would not exist without the advice of my husband. He knows how much my writing owes to him, so I will say only, "Thank you, Herbert."