I Am a Star (2 page)

I was born on December 31, 1934, in Kippenheim, a village in southern Germany. Kippenheim is situated at the foot of the Black Forest, close to the borders of France and Switzerland. The population of around two thousand was composed of about sixty Jewish families and approximately four hundred and fifty Catholic and Protestant families. My family belonged to the middle class. Papa had his own textile business. Jews had lived in Kippenheim for at least two hundred years. I was the last Jewish child born there. The synagogue was the center of our lives. I remember well the interior of our beautiful synagogue. The bright chandeliers always caught my eye. It was very strange and special for me to hear Cantor Schwab chant our Hebrew prayers. Most of the Jewish people of Kippenheim attended the Sabbath service on Saturday morning. There was always a special festive spirit during our holidays, and the worshipers came dressed in their best clothes. It was common practice to visit one another after the synagogue service and to invite a stranger into one’s home for dinner.

There was a very strong bond among the Jewish people of Kippenheim. We felt as if we were all members of an extended family. Many of the Christians of Kippenheim were farmers, while the Jews owned small shops and sold textiles or cattle. We were a friendly community, and both Christians and Jews assumed responsibility for their German citizenship, in peace and in war. Papa was a soldier in the German army in World War I. He was only eighteen years old when an enemy bullet tore through his right shoulder and wounded him badly. He was decorated with the Iron Cross for his bravery in the service of his country.

I was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher. Papa’s family had settled in Kippenheim some two hundred years earlier.

Most of his family made their living by buying and selling cattle, an occupation practiced by many Jews in southern Germany. Papa’s grandfather bought the large house in which Papa and I were born. Many Auerbachers lived in Kippenheim, and all of us were related. Mama was born in Jebenhausen, an even smaller village some two hundred miles away. Her father was also a cattle dealer. Papa’s parents had died a few years before his marriage to Mama. Three of Papa’s married sisters lived in different parts of Germany, and the fourth lived in France. Two sisters had two children each. They were my older cousins Hella, Werner, Heinz, and Lore. Mama’s only brother was married and lived a few hours away.

Berthold Auerbach (Moses Baruch Auerbacher), a member of my family, was one of Germany’s most beloved folk writers. He lived from 1812 to 1882, and his stories of the Black Forest made him world famous. Berthold Auerbach was born and lived in Nordstetten in southern Germany, which was where my family came from.

We were a happy community in Kippenheim until the sound of marching boots shattered the peace of our tranquil village. A massive riot took place on November 9, 1938. That event is called Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass. It marked the beginning of terror that would continue for seven years. I was then only three years old.

 

 

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nti-Semitism, or hatred of the Jews, has existed throughout the history of the Jewish religion. Many people disliked Jews because they had different customs and because they refused to become Christians. During the second half of the nineteenth century, however, a new type of anti-Semitism began to emerge. Some people began to say that Jews belonged to a different race and that Jews were racially inferior to Christians.

But who are the Jews and why did they inspire such feelings? Their origins can be traced to the patriarch Abraham, the father of a Semitic tribe of shepherds and farmers, whose revolutionary belief in the existence of one supreme God became the foundation of three great religions. The history of the Jews goes back almost four thousand years to their arrival in the biblical land of Canaan that was later called Palestine and today is called Israel. The Ten Commandments given by God to Moses serve as the basis for their religion, Judaism. Today there are people who follow this religion in almost every country in the world.

The Jews arrived in Germany about sixteen hundred years ago, around A.D. 400. They came from the Mediterranean region as traders following the Roman armies. From about A.D. 1096, during the time of the Crusades, which were Christian military expeditions that set out to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems, life became very difficult for the Jews living in Germany and other parts of Central Europe. The Crusaders offered the Jews the choice of baptism or death. “To sanctify the Name of God,” they slaughtered thousands of Jews who refused to betray their religion. The church branded the Jews “Christ-killers,” and Jews were thought of as evil people.

During most of the Middle Ages, the only occupations open to Jews were small trade and moneylending. The church regarded moneylending as sinful and did not permit Christians to charge interest. In this way, Jews were also associated with an evil practice.

In the Middle Ages, the Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe were sometimes forced to live in a restricted part of the city called a ghetto. In some places the Jews were isolated from other people behind walls. In the ghetto the streets were narrow and dark. Many people were poor and lived in overcrowded, crumbling houses, although some people became successful merchants. Everyone in the ghetto was forced to pay high taxes. No Jew was allowed to leave the ghetto from nightfall to daybreak and on Christian holidays. A locked gate sealed them off from the outside world. Harsh penalties were enforced if Jews were found outside of the walls during the curfew.

Conditions grew even worse when the Black Death struck. History records several outbreaks of this widespread plague and there was a particular epidemic that killed thousands of people in Europe between 1348 and 1351. The terrible sickness was blamed on the Jews, whom the Christians accused of practicing black magic and of poisoning the wells from which the Christians drew their water. Many Jews were expelled and fled eastward from Germany to Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Russia, where they established thriving Jewish communities. They were always a small minority in the total population in any country, however, and were regarded as outsiders because of their different religion and customs.