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11 Then and Now Father When I think of my father, I am certain that he knew what lay ahead of him, but that he nevertheless held fast to his faith in God. This was evident to us in all his expressions and actions during our time together in Theresienstadt and in Birkenau until the day we were separated from him. He never stopped being helpful to those in need. In Theresienstadt, he found a place to hold weekly Sabbath services, and even in Birkenau, he sang a shortened version of a Friday night service. But more than anything, it was his complete lack of anger, remarkable in a man who had always been quick to anger. Father’s quiet acceptance of his fate, and the composure he showed us, said to me that he was at peace. Not until the summer of 1939 did my father seek help from members of our Jewish community who themselves had managed to emigrate. He had helped many families with his own means to find safety abroad over the previous six years. When Margaret wrote him from England that she worried about owing her employers for the postage she needed to write him, he answers her in a letter of August 1939, that since the 1920s, “your parents gave away . . . two-thirds of my salary. You can tell your employers that once I am abroad, I shall repay them with compound interest.” While in the 1920s our parents’ gifts served charitable purposes, during the next decade their funds helped mostly poor Eastern Jews with large families to immigrate to Palestine. Even during the summer of 1939, he refused no one his assistance. And as always, he reports in the same letter, almost everyone, especially those with limited means, “look me up at home”— 162 Then and Now which he expresses by a pun—before they leave the country. Since the archives of the Jewish community of Hannover have not been found (actions against the Jews during Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938, were said to have been ordered to include the confiscation of the archives of the Jewish community), only Father ’s letters of 1939 and 1940 to his daughters have been preserved. Now only I am left to testify to his generosity. He evidently extended his help so discreetly that the recipient did not know its source. Perhaps that is the reason why I have not heard of a single individual who, in the postwar years, has acknowledged his exceptional generosity. As likely is that everyone was occupied with their own problems, and good deeds of long ago were simply forgotten. Aside from his deep concern for Margaret’s well-being in her new English surroundings, two themes recur in our father’s letters: First, his desire to leave, his hope to find work to support himself and his new wife—he stresses that he is ready to do any kind of work, no matter how menial—and second, no less important, his realistic fear that he will not be able to leave because the Gestapo intends to hold him in Hannover. In another letter of late August 1939, Father speaks of needing the consent (Einverständnis) of the Schlägerstrasse (site of the Gestapo offices in Hannover) to emigrate. My longing for you and the Little Ones is surely no less than yours for your father, especially since you are feeling the loss of your dear mother. But, dearest Gretel, there is something you must, at your age, think about and understand. There have to be men who are ready to look every danger in the eye when the interest of the larger community demands it. In addition, and regardless of any danger to myself, I also have to remain here in the interest of the State [Staatsinteresse]. And when such factors are in play, neither my love for you children, my instinct for life nor my own well-being can take the place of this higher law which must take precedence and even replace personal consideration . . . This is a strange statement, which seems to contradict those letters to Grete in which he urges her to help him emigrate as quickly as possible. He wrote it because he assumed that his letters were being read by the Gestapo. Now, with the help of the newly declassified documents in the main archive of Lower Saxony , we know that his assumption was correct. The Gestapo did read his mail. [18.223.111.48] Project...

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