I had occasionally heard that people like me who had been persecuted by the Nazis were sometimes invited to come back to the places where they had been born. I didn’t pay much attention to this, however, as I never imagined that this would happen to me.
I am one of the lucky ones who went on the Kindertransport to England at the end of June 1939, and that is why I am alive today to tell my story. My father had been successful in making arrangements for my sister and me to go on the Kindertransport. My sister, one year younger, left Berlin in April of 1939, and was taken in by a childless couple in the town of Northwich, Cheshire. Just two months later, a kind woman, Bertha Thomas, agreed to take me. She also lived in Northwich. Even though my sister and I lived in different households, we were still able to see each other at school and whenever we wanted as we could walk or cycle to each other’s houses.
After my father survived the Auschwitz, Dachau, and Mauthausen camps and arrived in New York with the help of an old friend, he naturally wanted to be reunited with his daughters. Uschi, my sister, did not want to leave England. But I looked forward to coming to New York and seeing the skyscrapers about which I had heard so much and arrived in December 1947.
For the first month or so in New York, I was helped by the United Jewish Appeal as I had only been allowed to bring a very small amount of money with me from England. It did not take me long, however, to get jobs, even if menial at first. After a while, I got a good job at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., with health benefits and a daily lunch which was my main meal of the day. After taking an aptitude test, I studied commercial illustration at Pratt Institute in the evenings.
Now fast forward to my return trip to Berlin. One day, reading my Kinderlink, the Kindertransport newsletter, I saw that there was a short paragraph informing former Berlin residents that if they wanted to get an invitation to return to that city, they should write to the Berlin Mayor’s office for an application. This was in the spring of 2008.
My friend, Walter Schmitt, who I had met the previous year, encouraged me to apply. This led to my emailing back and forth with Ruediger Nemitz of the Berlin Mayor’s office.
After writing to him about my history in Berlin, he wrote that I would need to wait till the following year, as there was a waiting list of people wanting to take advantage of this opportunity. When I wrote Herrn Nemitz that I was the daughter of Dr. Berthold Alexander who had lived and had his office at 130 Friedrichstraße, he was very interested and passed this information on to Dr. Rebecca Schwoch who was compiling a history of Berlin Jewish physicians during Hitler’s time. She lives and works in Hamburg at the Institute for Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin (History and Ethics of Medicine). While working on the book, Dr. Schwoch began emailing me to find out more about my father. I was glad to do this, and sent her lots of papers about him and also more details about me. She and I developed quite a friendship doing this. We emailed partly in German and partly in English.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2008, Herr Nemitz sent me aktuell . At the back of the magazine, someone by the name of Leo Gerechter was searching for news of relatives as he was the only survivor of his family. A German woman who seemed to be a friend of Leo’s also wrote for this same information. Her name was Amelie Doege, and I have since become very friendly with her.
The name Leo Gerechter rang a bell with me. On my shelves in Southbury, I had a German book of Grimm’s Maerchen (fairy tales) with the name of Leo Gerechter inscribed on the first page. This book had been given to me by Liesbeth Gerechter, a nurse and X-Ray technician who worked for my father. I emailed Leo and even emailed him a photo of Liesbeth. Leo was overjoyed on receiving my email. Liesbeth was his sister, and he had not known what had happened to her. I then sent him the book and the original photo of his sister.
Meanwhile, Amelie, who had befriended Leo, and I got to know each other more and more as we emailed each other, partly in English and partly in German. She was doing all she could to help Leo find lost relatives as he was the only survivor of his family. It happens that Amelie was living in the apartment where Leo and his family once lived. She was curious about the people who had lived and been deported from there. On the sidewalk in front of Amelie’s house, there is a small brass plate (a Stolperstein) listing the names of the Gerechter family. All over Berlin, at various places from which Jews were deported to their death, there are these small brass plates or Stolpersteine to commemorate them.
When Walter and I arrived at the hotel in Berlin, we were surprised to find a box of chocolates together with a message of welcome from Amelie in our hotel room. During the week that we were in Berlin, she came to the hotel and picked us up in her car and took us to the apartment where she lived. As I had once visited Liesbeth Gerechter there as a 10-year old girl, Amelie thought I might remember it and wanted to show us the apartment. While we were with Amelie, her fifteen-year-old daughter came home from school, carrying a large instrument, a cello. I was most impressed with this young girl, very beautiful in a serious kind of way with beautiful manners.
When Walter and I arrived in Berlin on September 1st, at the Berlin Tegel airport, we were met by Herr Nemitz and his team of helpers, and taken on a huge bus to the Hotel Concorde, a five-star hotel. We had all been sent special luggage labels so that Herr Nemitz could spot us. There were about 32 of us former Berliners who came from the US, England, Israel, and Argentina.
On our first day at the hotel, we were each given two folders, one in English and one in German, with the program for the week. This gave us information as to what was planned for us. Of course, they also gave us our first breakfast since we had been travelling all night. For the rest of that first day, we rested up.
On our second day, we were taken in two huge buses to the Berlin Rathaus, the Town Hall, where we were welcomed by Klaus Wowereit, the Mayor of Berlin, in the Hall of Arms. He spoke to us in German, but as it was known that not everybody understood German, a woman was standing next to him, who would then translate paragraph by paragraph into English.
While we were being seated and waiting for Mayor Wowereit, Heike Kröger, editor of aktuell magazine, came to where I was sitting to meet me. This was because of the story that had appeared in aktuell about my getting in touch with Leo Gerechter. She thought it was a wonderful story and was responsible for printing it.
On the third day, we were bussed to the Jewish cemetery, i.e., anyone of us who wanted to go there. As my mother who converted to Judaism is buried there, and also my paternal grandparents, I wanted to visit the graves. Weissensee Cemetery is huge, and it would have been impossible for me to find the graves by myself. Here the Germans were again very helpful. In advance of coming to Berlin, we had been asked about relatives buried there, their names and dates of death. From this information, they could find out the location of the graves and then helped us to find them when we arrived at the cemetery. In the afternoon of the same day, we were bussed to the Jewish Museum. Tours were conducted in English and German to help us. We were welcomed by Mr. Aubrey Pomerance, head of the Leo Baeck Institute and the archives of the museum. There was much to see about the Holocaust. Afterwards, there was a short reception with buffet. On the fourth day, we were driven to the Bundestag im Reichtagsgebäude and were welcomed by Frau Petra Pau, Deputy Speaker of the German Bundestag.
From there, we were taken on a trip on the River Spree through Berlin’s historical city center aboard the ship “Luna”. On board, we were welcomed by the Speaker of the Berlin House of Representatives, Walter Momper, and treated to a sumptuous lunch.
September 5, day number five, we were on our own, free to spend the day as we wanted. This did not mean we had nothing to do, however. Dr. Schwoch had been emailing me to tell me that she and her woman friend, who also does research at the Hamburg Institute, wanted to come to the hotel to meet me. They happened to be on vacation that week, which meant they could arrange to be in Berlin. Both of them arrived at the hotel and brought me a chocolate horseshoe for good luck. When I first saw Rebecca Schwoch, I was surprised to see how young she looked. She was dressed casually in a jeans jacket. I remarked on her young appearance. Laughing, she told me that she was 46 years old. I told her that was very young, considering I was almost twice her age. Rebecca has compiled a thick heavy book about 2018 Jewish physicians who were working during the Hitler regime in Berlin and what happened to them. The book weighs about four pounds. My father is included with photographs. She gave him more than a page as I had given her a lot of information about him. For many other doctors, she was not able to get as much information, and so there might only be one paragraph. She and her team did a lot of research to accomplish this, writing about what had happened to each physician, whether he had emigrated to the US or some other country, or whether he had been murdered by the Nazis.
After visiting with Rebecca in the morning, we had another social engagement in the afternoon. It was an invitation to the house of a Berlin couple. They were Reinhart Braun and his wife, Dr. Braun. They came in their new Mercedes to the hotel and picked us up and took us to their house. Dr. Braun had baked a pie for the occasion and had even bought a second pie. I was with her in the kitchen while she whipped up Schlagsahne, real cream, to serve on top of the pie. It was very pleasant sitting with them, while enjoying the pastry and coffee. After eating, they asked us to sign their guest book. Apparently, they often invited people like us to their house and asked them to sign the guest book. When it was time for us to leave, they were taking us back to our hotel, but going the long way to take us sightseeing first.
On the morning of September 6, we were bussed to Jewish sites in Berlin, accompanied by guides. In the evening, we were treated to La Traviata at the Berlin Opera house.
On our last day, there was a special buffet to end the week. Amelie Doege sent us home with some more chocolates, one box for Walter, and one for me. She also added two books about Jews in Berlin.
Most of the people went home to the countries where they were living. Walter and I had decided to stay another two weeks in Europe, taking advantage of the paid-for airfare.
This afforded us a wonderful opportunity to see more of Europe. We rented a car which Walter drove expertly on the Autobahn, first to Dresden and then to Heidelberg, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, and ended the trip in Paris, which is a city that I had always been longing to visit. And of course, we climbed the Eiffel Tower. Also went to the Louvre where we saw the Mona Lisa painting. We left from De Gaulle airport to return to JFK airport in New York.
Returning to Berlin and being treated so well by the Germans was an unforgettable experience, and I am glad that I went. My sister, who lives in England, could have gone too but did not.
I feel so lucky that I was able to go and had the companionship of Walter. Who could have imagined that he and I would come together for this trip. It was a miracle. Going to Berlin opened new doors for me.
Let’s remember that the Germans of today are a new generation, and many of them are very good people as I found out myself.