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5 We Are Back in Hannover On November 7, 1941, Eva and I arrived in Hannover’s central railroad station from which we had left almost three years earlier. Father was nowhere to be seen. A tall, straight-backed woman was walking alongside the train. She caught sight of us and waved. It was Mania, our stepmother. She appeared relieved to have found us. The first thing I saw was the yellow patch on her coat. The word Jude was imprinted in black in the center of the yellow Magen David (Star of David). She was anxious to get us home. While we lived not far from the station, she was worried to have to walk through a busy section of town with the two of us who, while obviously Jewish, wore no star. She explained that Father had to be in town on urgent business. We would see him later. Eva and I were terribly disappointed . Carrying our suitcases, we quietly walked home. When we entered our house, we found the familiar surroundings greatly changed. To my surprise, there were people everywhere. Although the year before , Father had mentioned in one of his letters that several families, including Lore Pels, a school friend of ours, had moved into some of the schoolrooms, we did not really grasp what this meant and were unprepared for what we found. Along the walls of both flights of stairs, all kinds of chests of drawers and cabinets were propped up, leaving a much narrower staircase. In our own apartment one wing was occupied by other people. Our family still had the two bedrooms, a small living room, and the kitchen. How exceptional this wealth of space was, I would soon learn. The grand piano—under which I remembered crouching to listen to Grete play—was no longer there. Mania took us into the kitchen and asked if we were hungry. We did not feel like eating. Finally the kitchen door opened and Father stuck in his head. He explained We Are Back in Hannover 65 that he had been detained by the Behörde (authorities); we had not forgotten that it was one of his euphemisms for the Gestapo. He was very tired. I was shocked when I saw him. The changes in the house had not prepared me for how changed he appeared to me. He was smaller, his hair much whiter than I remembered. Father held us close to him and kissed us. Still I felt safe in his embrace and happy to be with him again. Our stepmother spoke to us in a controlled, cool manner. I thought that her slightly accented speech had a harsh sound, but unlike our mother’s, her German was grammatically perfect. Her daughter appeared to be a young adult next to us. Lotte, who was not yet sixteen, had dark brown hair and dark, almondshaped eyes, and she was almost a head taller than her tall mother. Smiling shyly, she shook hands with us. I thought I could like Lotte, but I could not tell how Lotte felt about meeting Eva and me. From Father’s conversation with Mania, we gathered that there was no longer even a slight chance for our family to be able to go to Cuba. His hope to be able to emigrate to Cuba had been the reason for his request that we be allowed to return to Hannover. Had we arrived home too late, and if so, had our lateness prevented their timely departure? We did not ask and Father did not say. (From Zurich our friends, the Karos, wrote a postcard to Grete in Manchester in which they told her that Eva and I had returned to Hannover, and they expected we would be arriving in Cuba any day now.) Less than a month earlier, a small group of members of our community had managed to leave for Cuba. They may have been the last to reach safety. A year earlier Father and Mania fully expected that Lotte would emigrate to the United States. Her emigration was no longer even mentioned. Actually, two weeks before our return, by a secret decree of October 23, 1941, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the central SS office in Berlin under Himmler, prohibited, “without exception,” all Jewish emigration from Germany and its occupied territories.1 Nevertheless, the permission Father received to bring us home, regardless of whether he knew of that decree or not, was to be decisive for Eva and me. Since...

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