Alex's Wake (5 page)

My great-grandfather was a pillar of his community, remembered by his neighbors as a kind, generous man and also something of a character, a “Sachsenhagen original.” Julius Geweke, who was born in
Sachsenhagen in 1902, asked his father, a saddler, to recall life in the village in his day: “The horse dealer Moses Goldschmidt lived behind our house, over on Mittelstrasse. Whenever Goldschmidt received a shipment of horses he'd place a notice in the newspaper. And when a potential buyer came by to look at the horses, Goldschmidt would have the animals pranced through the streets of Sachsenhagen, his workhand Larsen trotting along keeping pace. Goldschmidt himself would stand in front of his house, smiling, smoking a big cigar, and cracking his whip smartly. The buyer would watch this parade of horses and then pick one out for closer inspection, looking into its mouth to verify that the animal was of the age advertised. After a bit of wrangling, the deal was sealed with a hearty handshake.”

The family business was not without its conflicts. On January 28, 1884, a dispute between Moses Goldschmidt and a carter named Heine was formally entered into the proceedings of the law courts of Stadthagen. There is no evidence today indicating what the dispute was about, but it took a long time to be resolved. Not until November 5 was a decision rendered, but for Moses, it was apparently worth the wait. The judge ruled in his favor and awarded him the not-inconsiderable sum of 350 marks.

The grand house at 94 Mittelstrasse was filled with not only the children of Moses and Auguste but four servants as well, who slept next door at 93 Mittelstrasse. They were the butler Fritz Wiebe, the valet Johann Wiltgreve, the housekeeper Fanny Schwarz, and the maid Luise Meuter. There was nearly always a fire burning in the big oven, keeping the house comfortably warm in the winter. And the Jewish holidays were always observed.

Into these secure and prosperous surroundings my grandfather, Alex, was delivered on New Year's Day 1879, the seventh of Moses and Auguste's children. On the same day, in London, the noted writer E. M. Forster was born. That year would also witness the births of Albert Einstein, Wallace Stevens, Ethel Barrymore, Will Rogers, and Joseph Stalin. And on the very last day of 1879, in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison would demonstrate incandescent lighting to the public for the first time.

Thirteen months later, on February 2, 1880, Auguste gave birth to her eighth child and seventh son, Carl Goldschmidt. He may have been one child too many. On November 7, 1881, Auguste died, at age forty-two. On her headstone in the Jewish cemetery in Sachsenhagen are the words, in Hebrew, “Here rests an admired woman, the crown of her husband and children. She was modest and traveled the way of peace.”

So my grandfather lost his mother when he was only two. I like to think that his large family cushioned the blow somewhat, even though his oldest sibling, brother Albert, was nineteen years his senior. Alex was quite close to his two immediate brothers, Max, four years older, and Carl, and the three of them attended classes every day at the Jewish school in the synagogue. In 1889, when Alex was ten, a superintendent from Kassel, one of the largest cities in the Hessian principality, paid a visit and filed a report stating that the Jewish school in Sachsenhagen currently was teaching only five pupils and that three of them were Goldschmidts: Max, Alex, and Carl. The superintendent declared that with such minuscule attendance, there was little reason to keep the school open. Within two years, it closed its doors and the three young Goldschmidts began to attend the main public school in Sachsenhagen, arriving immediately after the morning religious class.

Despite the success of his father's business, Alex had no desire to be a horse dealer. Instead, after staying in Sachsenhagen long enough to earn his
Abitur
degree (roughly equivalent to two years of college), he turned his back on his rural upbringing and moved northwest to Lower Saxony's fourth-largest city, Oldenburg, in 1906. He was twenty-seven years old. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that his first apartment in Oldenburg looked out on the city's
Pferdemarkt
, or horse market.

Two years later, just before midnight on April 15, 1908, Moses Goldschmidt died, at the age of seventy-three. Alex and his six brothers gathered for the funeral. Given the resources at hand, it could have been a lavish affair. At the time of his death,
Pferdehändler
Goldschmidt's assets were estimated at 76,500 German marks. It's not an exact reckoning, but in 1913, just five years later, a mark was valued at around four American dollars, making his estate worth approximately $306,000 . . .
in 1908. Given the rate of inflation over the past century, when Moses Goldschmidt died, his total net worth exceeded 7 million in today's dollars. He was by far the wealthiest man in Sachsenhagen and possibly for miles around. The equine occupation had been a runaway, some might say galloping, success.

But death comes for rich and poor alike. His headstone reads, in Hebrew, “Here lies Moses Goldschmidt, a god-fearing man. He loved justice and followed the road of righteousness. He fed the hungry. He died on a Thursday, the first day of Pesach 5668.”

T
HURSDAY
, M
AY
12, 2011.
“Hier ruht unser lieber Vater Moses Goldschmidt, geb. d. 18. Febr. 1835 gest. d. 15. April 1908,”
I read aloud to Amy. “Here rests our dear Father Moses Goldschmidt . . . ,” I translate from the German side of the headstone. We are standing beneath two tall, graceful trees within the boundaries of the Jewish cemetery in Sachsenhagen on a late afternoon that is turning windy and increasingly cloudy.

Earlier today, after several fruitful hours in the archives of Bückeburg Palace, we returned to our little Meriva and motored across the flat farmland of Lower Saxony along the ancient trade thoroughfare that is now federal highway B65. We drove into the city of Stadthagen and thence on country road L445 through fields of rye and over a small canal, until we reached the southern edge of Sachsenhagen. I was here once before, twelve years ago, on the dire date of November 9 in the company of my brother. We'd had the devil's own time finding the cemetery, which is tucked off the road, securely away from view, but with my memory of its location clear in my mind's unshakable GPS system, I was confident I could find it this time. But there was a glitch in the wiring, and finding the humble graveyard again took several attempts.

Now that we've found it, I note that, as in 1999, the cemetery looks ragged, overgrown, and somewhat neglected. The iron fence that surrounds the place sags here and there, the grass is high, and weeds flourish amid the graves, which seem randomly scattered about. The exceptions, however, are the families Philippsohn and Goldschmidt. My family's
headstones are standing side by side, with Levi on the far left and Moses on the far right, with Johanna and Auguste resting between them.

It is a profound and unsettling place, and as the wind freshens and the clouds thicken in the late afternoon sky, I am deeply conscious of my vastly diminished family, the loss of Peter is still keen and aching, and yet here are sturdy and lasting memorials to what was once a thriving, prosperous clan of Goldschmidts on whom fortune smiled. As linden branches toss overhead, I try to imagine these long-dead family members, conjuring with the concept that, should the impossible occur and should we somehow meet face to face, there would be a moment akin to looking into a mirror, of noticing with a start a familiar feature, an eyebrow, an ear, the curve of a lip or the curl of hair, a “Hey, don't I know you?” moment of mysterious yet joyful recognition that I find at this time and in this place overwhelming. I miss my family terribly, those both recently and long departed, and I hug my remaining family, Amy, tightly.

As we turn to leave the cemetery, we notice amid the ragged grass two long parallel depressions in the ground running the length of the graveyard from south to north. They are, we learn later, the ghostly tracks of the heavy wooden wheels of that cart driven so long ago by Georg Buschmann.

Sachsenhagen is too small to sustain a proper hotel, so we drive our Meriva back to Stadthagen, where we've reserved a room in the Gerbergasse, a former tannery. By now the clouds have produced a steady rain, which adds its note of solemnity to the atmosphere. But the next morning arrives with abundant sunshine, and we return to Sachsenhagen eagerly anticipating new discoveries.

For weeks, ever since plans for my journey began to take solid shape, I have been in e-mail contact with Theodor Beckmann, a member of Sachsenhagen's historical society. He has sent me a great deal of information, always in the kindest manner imaginable. I am grateful for his assistance and also for his excellent English. Despite several years of high school German and many trips to the country, my German has never advanced beyond the barely serviceable stage. So I was sorry to learn a week or so ago that on this particular Friday the 13th,
Herr Beckmann would be in France with his wife. His very able colleague, Erika Sembdner, would meet us instead; alas, her English proves to be no better than my German.

But her pleasure at our arrival seems unbounded. We ask for her at the
Rathaus
, and she immediately hurries from her house to greet us. For the next ninety minutes, Erika leads us on a sentimental journey through Sachsenhagen. First she shows us 9 Oberestrasse, the house where Great-Great-Grandfather Levi lived with Johanna, their two fruit trees, and a single goat. The imposing white house with its high sloping roof is situated directly on the main road that leads south toward the cemetery. We then visit the grand house on Mittelstrasse where Great-Grandfather Moses lived from 1864 until his death in 1908. Erika tells us that it's among the oldest houses in Sachsenhagen and has been expertly restored. Built by a master carpenter in the seventeenth century, not long after the great fire, it's a stunning example of the traditional
fachwerk
style, in which heavy wooden beams are fastened together by mortise and tenon joints. Such ancient grandeur. And it belonged to my family. Amy and I stand silently, amazed.

Erika then leads us to a small building just off the market square. Here the Sachsenhagen synagogue and Jewish school once stood, from its gladsome dedication in 1870 until the night of November 9, 1938, when it and countless other
shuls
across Germany were plundered and set afire during the orgy of violence known as
Kristallnacht
. Today the land is occupied by a private house and garden. In 1885, when Grandfather Alex was six years old and attending the Jewish school, there were 58 Jews living in Sachsenhagen, a number that represented 7 percent of the total population of 840. In 1939, in the wake of
Kristallnacht
, the Jewish percentage of the citizenry still measured 8 percent, 88 of 1,089. But then on July 20, 1942, the Gestapo ordered Jewish citizens of Sachsenhagen out of their homes and told them to assemble in the market square. They were rounded up, placed in secure trucks, and deported to the East. None of them returned. Today, the Jewish population of Sachsenhagen is zero.

As I sadly ponder this grim statistic, Erika says brightly,
“Jetzt besuchen wir die Schule,”
and herds us back to our car. Following her directions, we drive about a mile to Sachsenhagen's one primary school. We arrive shortly after lunchtime and the grounds and play areas are nearly empty. Erika walks with us into a cheerful red-brick entranceway that declares in brass letters that we have arrived at the Gerda Philippsohn School.

Today there are no more Jews living in my ancestral home of Sachsenhagen, but the village school is named for a Jewish girl who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942. Amy and I were welcomed as near celebrities
.

Gerda Philippsohn, born in Sachsenhagen in 1927, began attending school in 1933. She was an eager learner and bright student. On the afternoon of November 15, 1938, six days after
Kristallnacht
, she was summarily dismissed from the school because she was a Jew. On March 28, 1942, Gerda, her parents, and eleven other Sachsenhagen Jews were deported. At age fifteen, Gerda was murdered at Auschwitz.

In 2000, at the urging of former teacher Rita Schewe, the school changed its name to the Gerda Philippsohn School. The entranceway bears a memorial plaque to Gerda, exhibiting her picture and a brief explanation of her fate.

The school's principal, Frau Herrmann, comes out eagerly to shake our hands, take our picture as we pose in front of the little memorial to
Gerda, and present us with a pen and pencil set embossed with the school's name. We feel a bit like visiting celebrities as we are escorted through the school, looking into a few classes, and are introduced as descendants of people who lived in Sachsenhagen many years ago. I feel deeply touched by the decision to rename the village's single school for a long-dead victim of the country's villainous past, yet also curious as to what prompted the decision, seeing that none of the children currently attending the Gerda Philippsohn School shares the one characteristic that marked its innocent namesake for murder.