Alex's Wake (9 page)

As I mentioned earlier, Klaus Helmut was born on September 14, 1921, during the halcyon days my family spent living in the beautiful house on Gartenstrasse, when business was booming at the
Haus
der Mode
and the Goldschmidts were certified
machers
in the affairs of Oldenburg. He spent his first decade in the protective care of his parents, playing in the nearby Schlossgarten and studying at home with his mother. In time for the Easter term of 1931, he left the nest and enrolled in the fourth grade of the city's Wallschule. One year later, on the strength of his performance on an entrance exam, Helmut was admitted as student number 2555 to the fifth grade of the prestigious Altes Gymnasium, which had been founded in the sixteenth century and numbered the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers among its graduates.

At the time he matriculated at the Altes Gymnasium Oldenburg (AGO), in the spring of 1932, Helmut was ten-and-a-half years old, stood just under five feet tall, and weighed ninety-one pounds. He was described in a teacher's evaluation as “good-natured, polite, enthusiastic, and conscientious,” possessing “the talent and intellectual ability to meet the demands” of the AGO's rigorous curriculum. A year later, in March 1933—two months after Hitler had assumed the chancellorship—a teacher at the AGO described Helmut's “disposition and character” with these words: “talent good, thinking ability good, very good-natured, polite, understands easily, but his effort and attentiveness vary greatly. He is exempt from physical education due to a case of rickets.”

Within weeks of that assessment, the Nazi government passed the Law Against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities, targeting the country's “non-Aryans.” The law specified that the number of new Jewish students at any German school must not exceed 1.5 percent of all new applicants and limited the number of Jewish pupils at any one institution to 5 percent of the total student population of that school. As an editorial in a reliable Nazi newspaper explained, “A self-respecting nation cannot leave its higher activities in the hands of people of racially foreign origin. Allowing the presence of too many of these foreigners could be interpreted as an acceptance of other races, something decidedly to be rejected.”

Schools across Germany hurried to demonstrate their compliance with this new law. The AGO sent a letter to the Oldenburg State Ministry in early May declaring that, of its 194 students, only 3 were
nichtarisch
, or non-Aryan: Paul Gerson of the fifth grade, Helmut
Goldschmidt of the fifth grade, and Hermann Loewenstein of the fourth. The letter hastened to add that no new
nichtarisch
students had been accepted for the Easter term.

Across town, the all-girl Cecilia School sent its letter to the ministry on May 18, reporting that, of its 543 students, only 6 girls were
nichtarisch
, all of them
israelitisch
. They were first-grader Kathe Gröschler-Jever, second-grader Susanne de Haas, and sixth-graders Inge Cohen, Ingeborg Liepmann, Marianne Schiff, and Eva Goldschmidt. All of the other girls, the Cecilia administrator assured the ministry, were of “Aryan descent.”

So it was that my Uncle Helmut and Aunt Eva spent the following five years attending their respective schools as outsiders, an unhappy status for schoolchildren under the best of circumstances. Ottheinrich Hestermann, one of Helmut's schoolmates at the AGO, recalls that Helmut stood apart from the other children during breaks in the day's schedule. Herr Hestermann speculates that Helmut's isolation may have been due to the menacing presence of a brown-shirted official assigned to monitor all free-period activity in the school's courtyard.

Despite being shunned during those periods of official surveillance, Helmut maintained good relationships, especially considering the circumstances, with his teachers and fellow students. Throughout the mid-1930s, even as the outside world grew ever colder for the Jews of Germany, the teachers of the Altes Gymnasium spoke warmly of Helmut Goldschmidt. His evaluation from the fall term of 1935: “His conduct in school is generally praiseworthy; his grades show his good effort and ability.” At Christmas 1936: “He achieved good results while his conduct was admirable.” At Easter 1937: “His conduct is perfect; application and attentiveness are commendable.”

Helmut's grades were also quite commendable, again considering the circumstances of the times. Those circumstances included not only the heightened ostracism and legal discrimination against Jews throughout the country, but also the atmosphere within the hallowed halls of the Altes Gymnasium itself. The school had already existed for five centuries by the 1930s; it had a long, distinguished legacy with a conservative culture that was generally anti-Nazi in nature. But the local
leaders installed as AGO headmaster a man named Westhusen, who proudly displayed a golden lapel pin signifying that he had been a member of the National Socialist Party since before Chancellor Hitler assumed office in 1933. As a part of his curriculum, students at the AGO were required to read and discuss a biology textbook that elucidated the tenets of
Rassenkunde
, or “racial knowledge,” promoted by a scientist from Leipzig named Otto Steche. According to Dr. Steche, “the Jewish race is foreign to European races” and “mixtures” between Jews and Gentiles are “harmful” and thus to be strenuously avoided. In literature courses, both subtle and overt attacks on the Jews were a regular part of classroom instruction. When an English class studied Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice
, the teacher made sure his students understood that the character Shylock was proof that the Jew was both inferior and dangerously conniving, unfit to live among and engage in commerce with his Aryan betters. The
Abitur
, the final examination, of 1938, was replete with anti-Semitic slogans and undisguised notions about racial purity.

Through it all, Helmut's grades remained, as his teachers wrote, commendable. The AGO maintained a grading system based on the numbers 1 through 6, wherein a “1” was considered outstanding and a “6” indicated a failing grade. Throughout his years at the AGO, Helmut received only 1s and a single 2 in conduct, and 1s, 2s, and a single 3 in attentiveness. He earned his best grades in language courses, with 1s and 2s in German, 2s and 3s in Latin, 2s and 3s in Greek, and 2s and 3s in French. But his grades in nearly all of his subjects were commendable: 1s, 2s, 3s, and a single 4 in history; 2s and 3s in geography; 2s and 3s and a single 4 in biology, arithmetic, and mathematics. Perhaps surprisingly, given his musical brother, Helmut was a bit less accomplished in his arts classes, receiving a consistent reckoning of 3s and 4s in music and drawing. His handwriting was also judged to be nothing special, with 3s and 4s his usual reward.

Helmut's greatest difficulty at school was physical education, and his most implacable adversary was the teacher of that class. As his early evaluation at the AGO stated, he suffered from rickets, a softening and slight deformity of his leg bones, and was thus exempt from physical
education for his first years at the school. Beginning with the autumn term of 1936, however, Helmut's legs had strengthened and he began taking part in the classes. But Helmut was a bookish boy, more at home in the classroom than in the gym or on the playing field, and the results were predictably dismal. His grades in physical education never exceeded a 4, and his written evaluations always made note of his shortcomings. Fall 1937: “In physical education, Helmut needs to make a greater effort.” Christmas 1937: “His poor results in physical education have not yet improved.” Easter 1938: “It is regrettable that he still has no achievements in physical education.” Fall 1938: “In phys. ed. Helmut was without accomplishment, and his physical abilities are generally very low.”

Those frank assessments were probably difficult for Helmut to read three times a year, but they were nothing compared to the almost daily abuse he suffered at the hands of his teacher, a committed National Socialist and, apparently, an unreconstructed bully. He made no secret of his contempt for Helmut's weakness and lack of speed and coordination and lost no opportunity to contrast the shortcomings of this miserable human specimen, a representative of the entire Jewish “race,” with the strength, endurance, grace, and overall physical beauty of the Aryan Master Race. Helmut's wretched attempts at soccer, swimming, handball, fencing, gymnastics, and track and field were all brass-plated opportunities for the teacher to gleefully spout his racial theories in front of Helmut's schoolmates, most of whom were members of the Hitler Youth and who, even if they had wanted to, had no standing to protest.

Yet it seems that Helmut's classmates did mount a single protest, or perhaps it was no more than a practical joke. The occasion was a school-wide cross-country meet that was held in a local forest known as the Eversten Wald. The runners, including Helmut, gathered at the starting line, the starter's pistol fired, and off they ran, disappearing into the wood. About fifteen minutes later, the lead runner burst out of the trees and raced panting up to the finish line. It was Helmut Goldschmidt. The other boys had conspired to let him win.

The phys. ed. teacher was not amused. Striding up to Helmut, he swung at the boy with such force that his punch knocked my uncle to the ground, unconscious. The rest of the runners, just now arriving, did
not dare to intervene but stood silently watching as Helmut, dazed, picked himself up and staggered away, alone.

But my uncle was by no means a completely silent victim, as a famous, or notorious, act of courage and conviction still legendary in the halls of the AGO makes clear. In the early autumn of 1938, the entire school gathered in the venerable assembly hall to hear a lecture by a member of the
Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland
(VDA), the Society of Germans Living Abroad. Ostensibly, the lecturer was there to promote his organization, to teach the students of the AGO about the many places where Germans lived around the world, and to proclaim proudly that German culture was becoming a global phenomenon. But very soon it became apparent that the speaker had another, darker agenda: to illuminate the growing and menacing worldwide Jewish conspiracy. No matter where in the world an upstanding German citizen might find himself, declared the speaker, there too would exist the Jewish peril. The Jewish banker, the Jewish merchant, the Jewish writer, the Jewish lecher . . . all these representatives of the Jewish race threatened traditional German values, German methods of conducting business, and the lovely German women, whose beauty and grace were renowned from pole to pole. The representative of the VDA spelled out an exhaustive list of Jewish atrocities.

Suddenly, in the midst of this vitriol, Helmut Goldschmidt, seventeen, stood up and shouted,
“Das ist alles Lüge!”
(“These are all lies!”). With that, he turned and strode out of the room. Headmaster Westhusen jumped up from his seat, ran after Helmut, caught him by the arm, and forcibly dragged him back into the assembly hall and up onto the stage, next to the red-faced lecturer. There, in full view of more than two hundred students and faculty, Herr Westhusen slapped Helmut across the face and then ordered him to leave. Fellow student Ottheinrich Hestermann, remembered that “we all sat filled with shame as well as sympathy for our courageous comrade. But neither students nor teachers spoke a single word. A touch of pogrom atmosphere had drifted through the hall.”

That atmosphere would soon become pervasive and stifling. November 9 was approaching, the fifteenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's
abortive beerhall putsch in Munich, the opening shots fired in the National Socialists' revolution. The date had long been enthusiastically celebrated by the Nazis and warily regarded by the Jews. The writer Karl Heinz Adler recalled, “It was a day for these glorious gangsters to remember their heroes with flags, marches, and songs. You quickly learned that this was not a time for Jews to appear on the streets.”

As that date in 1938 approached, the local newspaper wrote an article headlined, “The 9th of November in Oldenburg,” heralding the occasion:

The board of the Oldenburg branch of the National Socialist German Workers' Party has seen to it that the citizens of our city will be able to celebrate the anniversary of the day in 1923 when the Fuehrer marched with his followers to the
Feldherrnhalle
fighting for the re-birth of Germany. In ten events scheduled for the evening of this glorious day of the movement, the comrades of the town will unite in demonstrating their inner closeness to the world view of Adolf Hitler. The dignified ceremonies, carefully adapted for the day, will represent a deeply spiritual experience reaching far into everyday life through their meaningful gravity and their proud devotion to the heroes who sacrificed themselves for and will eternally keep watch over Germany. Over the next few days we will have special reports on these ceremonies and their content.

So a grand celebration had been planned for November 9, but there were signs that more sinister events were in the works as well. Synagogues in Munich and Nuremberg had been set on fire during the summer, and the American ambassador to Germany had cabled his concerns to Washington about increased levels of anti-Jewish violence. There were also reports from Palestine and Slovakia that hinted at the real possibility that Germany would soon stage a “spontaneous” people's action against the Jews.

But whatever had been secretly arranged, real-life events played into the hands of those either wishing for or planning violence. On November 7, a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, angered by the
treatment received by relatives caught up in a border dispute between Germany and Poland, walked into the German Embassy in Paris and shot Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. Rushed to the hospital, vom Rath clung to life for forty-eight hours, but finally succumbed at 5:30 p.m. on November 9.