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Excerpts from
Chapter 1
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THE WAIL FROM HELL
My origins
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 In keeping
with the Mennonite practice of frugality, the family
vehicle was a black coach. Though black, even
austere in appearance, convention lost out to human
pride. The coach was a luxury conveyance in every
aspect, especially because it could be driven only
from a coachman's seat. Later, much later, that
coach would be driven by a British POW. It was in
that family environment in which my mother, as a
young girl, learned to sing, play the piano and
guitar, and took acting lessons. She also learned
French and English, and waited for the right man to
sweep her off her feet. |
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This is how I first knew my mother. |
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 That man would be my father; loved, respected,
feared, and later — much later — forgiven. Father
was the only son of a Berlin postal inspector, a
Prussian civil servant who was a man proud of his
profession and the middle class standing it granted.
He was scrupulously committed to honest dedication
to duty. These character traits and traditions of
conduct he passed on. "When you visit me in the
office, my boy, you may play with the stamps, but
you must bring your own paper and ink pad from
home!" |
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As Staff Col. MD. Note white cross Olympic Medal
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Separation of Church and State
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Lella |
Hitler's
Germany is regarded as a godless country, and officially, that
is correct. In actuality, it was everything but. God and
religion were under subtle and sometimes not so subtle attack,
but not even Hitler could get the average German out of church.
Sunday was
Lella's day off. In the early morning she would go to St.
Hedwig's Cathedral, and I was permitted to accompany her. The
pomp and circumstance of Catholic high mass, the large bells in
the twin steeples and fine-toned bells when the host was raised,
the smell of incense, and the quiet moments for personal,
introspective prayer granted by that oldest of all denominations
of Christianity have remained with me as precious and most
personal possessions.
Being
raised in the Lutheran faith, yet exposed to these early
Catholic impressions, I believe, has been the reason for my
discomfort with organized religion. I am closed particularly to
claims made in favor of one denomination over another,
especially when made by a zealot. In my view, the soul is a
unique gift from God, created to seek a way back to our maker.
That search constitutes the dynamics that generate all belief
systems, from aboriginal to the great religions of the world.
That search is personal; whatever its path, it is acceptable to
the source, which remains a mystery that depends on faith.
Hence, we are entitled to our preference in how and where we
worship. To me this has been the natural part of the argument in
favor of separation of church and state, because it is
denominational interpretation that causes friction between
peoples, not the belief in a Creator. Our Founding Fathers knew
that, yet we still miss that salient point.
The myth that Germany did not have a
democratic tradition I look at the beginning of the Hitler episode as
a political con job that is increasingly comparable to our own
political strife. We as Americans have generally found solace
in a myth that has seeped into interpretive post-Nazi
literature, namely, that Germany did not have a democratic
tradition, and therefore fell easy prey to a man like Hitler.
That is not true.1 Because Germany functioned as a
constitutional monarchy is precisely what makes Hitler's success
the traumatic phenomenon it became. True, the German
circumstances during the years leading up to 1932 had been
dangerous on national as well as private levels to say the
least, but the real rub lay with the Weimar Republic; mismanaged
by splinter parties in coalition as it was, it had left the
country divided along ideological lines. It was also a
government of enormous entitlements, and struggled with the
assimilation of large numbers of foreign immigrants escaping
Tsarist pogroms in Russia. Split as the Germans were, instead of
looking to their collective government to cure the nation’s
ills, people began to look to their party leaderships for
solutions. And so a political conning process proved easy to
foist on a needy nation, and in the process sweep away
discredited institutions. Such practitioners pose a great danger
in any society with a tradition of trust in government and
basic good will towards its practicing representatives. Most
western civilized nations meet these criteria most of the time.
"Change"
The good con always starts gradually. If he is politically
astute and charismatic, as Hitler certainly was, the target — in
this case the German population at large — neither suspects nor
wants to acknowledge that possible chicanery is being
perpetrated by one of their respected own. Add
to that mix anger accumulated, unrelieved and constantly touted
in vivid victimization terms for more than a decade, and you
have a pretty solid platform on which to base an ideological
conversion. So what if the man does not speak good German? So
what if his followers beat up a few hated communists? And even
so what if he is culpable of personal indiscretions? As long as
he carries the water of progress, he is advancing the nation's
most fervently hoped-for agenda of
validation, and a little fudging on the means to reach that end
can be conveniently overlooked. His few detractors are shouted
down, discredited, and made to feel unwelcome in their own
society.
Like father, like son
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Father's pride & joy, which he refused
to trade. |
If
there was no boat handy, I was not
beyond stealing one. |
What is a Jew, and what is a
Concentration Camp
Very disappointed, I did not let the matter drop.
Some days later Mother explained to me in a very low
voice that a Jewish family had owned the boat, that
they had been forced to leave Germany suddenly, and
that was the reason for the advantageous price. To
me, the Jewish boat episode represents the dividing
line between peace and the personal and national
upheavals that were to follow. I never saw my father
very much after that, or my mother for that matter,
and when I did they were a changed couple. Obvious
signs of worry and anxiety, particularly on my
mother's face, had become a regular feature.
Whispered parental conversations, blackout drapes,
and food rationing soon became the order of the day.
All the play and verse-smithing that had brought so
much pleasure to Father and myself became but a
memory. The family's mood changed to somber, which
remained the predominant characteristic of the brief
time before my sudden and permanent departure from
parents, Lella, sisters, and the home I had grown up
in so happily.
I did not know what "Jewish" was, nor did I ask.
Since I was always inquisitive, I have tried later
to explain the omission to myself, but cannot. I
assume the general gloom with which Mother gave her
explanation must have signaled a closed subject.
However, another event would soon fill that void.
The yellow Star of David had appeared on one of the
park benches where Fritz and I regularly played. Not
long after that, I saw a young woman in a dark blue
winter coat with the same star sewn onto it.
It was a gray morning. This time Mother and I were
at the front window when something caught her
attention. A covered truck without identification
was double-parked half a block up the street. Some
plainclothes men were leading a couple out of the
apartment house. Suddenly I heard a deep sigh as
only my mother could produce:
"My God! They are taking away the Kipnitzes!"
"Where are they taking them?" I asked.
"I think, to a concentration camp," came the slow
answer.
"What is a concentration camp?"
"That is a camp where enemies of the state are
concentrated and watched, so they cannot act against
the country."
"They must have done something very bad," I said.
"I don't know," she answered, and I know that she
believed it until her eyes were eventually pried
open after 1945.
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