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Fred Hilsenrath signs the Book of Records in Halle while attending a reception with other Holocaust survivors.
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Visit shows you can go home again By Fred Hilsenrath
It was way back in 1938. I was 9 years old. Our family lived in Halle, a city of 200,000 near Leipzig and Dresden. The persecution of Jews in Germany had reached unbearable proportions. I was afraid to go to school, being beaten bloody by students and the teacher. "Brownshirts" roamed the streets breaking windows of Jewish homes; synagogues were ransacked and burned. Jews were arrested in the middle of the night to be sent to concentration camps, never to be seen again. Jews and dogs were not allowed to enter local movie theaters or restaurants. We had to leave. But where to?
Nobody allowed us in. Finally my mother, brother and I fled to Romania where my grandfather had a farm. Romania was still independent and some sort of peace reigned. Father remained in Germany, still hoping to get a visa to the U.S. at the American consulate in Berlin. Not long thereafter, Romania joined the German Axis. The war against Russia broke out. We were deported into camps in Southern Romania and a few months later transferred to ghettos in the newly occupied Ukraine. There we languished for three years, starving, cold, diseased, doing forced labor in hopeless conditions. In 1944 the Russians liberated us, if it could be called liberation.
My brother joined the illegal immigration to Israel. The Red Cross found my father alive in France. Mother and I walked across Europe to join him. We crossed borders at night and wound up in communist jails. Eventually we got to France and our family was back together again, almost a miracle in those days. A return to Germany was out of the question. Never did we want to set foot on German soil again. In 1949, I got a visa to the U.S. and here I am a happy Saratogan.
The point of this story is the recent invitation by the city of Halle to Holocaust survivors to revisit their city of birth, to inaugurate a new museum of the history of Jews in Halle dating back to the 11th century, to commemorate 60 years of the infamous Krystall Nacht, to meet the mayor and citizens of Halle, to talk, to get reacquainted, to forgive, to accept history with some understanding, to look into the future, and to make sure it will not happen again there or anywhere.
The mayor of Halle, Dr. Klaus Rauen, and the city administrators received 30 of us and our companions with utmost hospitality. We were treated to the best hotel, the finest restaurants, tastefully chosen cultural activities and lots of speeches. At first it was not easy on either side not to feel the tension, but the warmth of the words by Dr. Rauen soon dissipated any suspicion of insincerity.
The mayor told how he, as a 5-year-old, was left with Jewish neighbors when his parents went out for the evening. The brownshirts broke into the neighbor's home, beat the couple bloody and dragged them off to a concentration camp. The child was in shock when the parents returned. It was this memory as well as the realization of the enormity of the German crime that prompted the invitation by the mayor to the surviving Jews of Halle.
I met school friends from 60 years ago who now live in England, in Uruguay, in Israel. Many had been lucky enough to escape from Germany in the nick of time. Only three of us had been to camps. All the others were not here to talk about it. We had a lot to tell each other, to catch up on the stories of our lives. Most everybody spoke English and my wife, Eleanor, could participate. Eleanor's presence made it easier for me to take a philosophical approach to the flood of painful memories.
Eleanor and I had some time to explore Halle, a city of the middle ages. A statue of Handel stands in the middle of the market next to the Marien Church where Martin Luther preached. In the center of the marketplace stands a tall somber looking stone tower. It is called the red tower. I never knew why. It was, we were told, the place where executions took place. The city lies at the edge of the Saale River, famous for its picturesque landscape. Eleanor and I walked along the footpath at the water's edge that I remember from my childhood. We climbed up an old fortress from the 11th century overlooking the river. Halle, as many other cities in Germany, is full of history and reminders of the cultural development of Germany. How then did the events of the Holocaust happen? In retrospect it can be explained but never understood.
Fred Hilsenrath is a Saratoga resident.
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Saratoga, California Since 1975
