Perspectives on family stories of Görlitz, Dachau, the Kindertransport and the Holocaust
Category Archives: Theresienstadt
Known as Terezin in Czech, this former 18th-century barracks town north of Prague was used as a transit camp/ghetto for deportations by the Nazis. It was ruthlessly exploited by Nazi propaganda – films showed happy, apparently well-fed children and healthy prisoners, but in truth conditions were very poor and disease was rife. When the Red Cross visited, officials were tricked by the staging of a football match, while all the sick prisoners and foul conditions were carefully screened off. Some prisoners were duped into believing Theresienstadt would be like some sort of spa – they brought their best clothes and opted for rooms with a ‘lake view’ or a ‘park view’ – when neither existed, and everyone was crammed into shared spaces. Hans Neumeyer, his sister Irma Kuhn and his father in law Martin Ephraim all perished there. Most prisoners either died of illness there or were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
It’s a grey, chill day in November 2023. My wife Anne and I have ventured to Lohhof, a district of Unterschleissheim, a far-flung dormitory suburb of Munich. It’s not exactly tourist territory. The friendly local who helped us make sure we had the right S-Bahn ticket from central Munich had never heard of it.
The reason we’re here is because of a badly faded photocopy dated 2 April 1965. It’s part of a sworn statement made for my mother Ruth in her compensation case against the Bavarian government for the losses the family had incurred under the Nazis while living in Dachau. The statement concerns my grandmother, Vera Neumeyer (murdered, probably in Auschwitz in 1942). This was given in German by family friend and Dachau resident Aranka Wirsching. Most of the script is now illegible but the word Lohhof is there. “She told me that she had to walk to Lohhof and there had to do manual work. She didn’t tell me about language lessons… [rest of text illegible, on a faded photocopy].“
The line from Aranka Wirsching’s statement saying that Vera Neumeyer was made to go to Lohhof
Lohhof was one of some three hundred places in and around Munich where Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis were made to do slave labour (Zwangsarbeit). A number of Poles who were deported with my grandmother Vera Neumeyer on 13 July 1942 were also working here, and she mentions in a letter that she is learning Polish from some of them. Only a couple of months earlier in 2023 I spot that statement from Aranka Wirsching. After some googling, I then find out that in September 2023, only a few weeks before our visit, a memorial site has been inaugurated at Lohhof, in a modern industrial estate.
I have arranged to meet Veronika Leikauf here. She works at the Munich City Museum and is in charge of the Lohhof memorial project and fills us in with the details. Little was known about the site until about ten years ago when an archive in Berlin revealed the extend of slave labour at Lohhof. There’s now a series of nicely set out and very informative display boards with photos and captions in German. The footway from the station to the former factory site is now a Path of Remembrance, paved with tiny pieces of blue concrete depicting flax flowers, and edging the pavement are metal plates bearing names of some of those forced to work there. Veronika points out the surviving tower and gateway of the otherwise vanished flax factory. We can’t go beyond the entrance, as it’s a private business.
The project isn’t yet complete. Doubtless more names of those who underwent slave labour will emerge – in fact three of the Poles who were deported with Vera are recorded in the Munich archive as being installed at Lohhof aren’t yet listed on the project’s website, in addition to Vera herself.
One of dozens of flower motifs in the pavement marking the route forced labourers took from the railway station to the flax factory at Lohhof. [Click on the arrow to advance the slideshow if you are viewing on a computer rather than a phone]
Memorial information boards near the station
Historic photo of the Lohhof flax factory on one of the information boards
A portion of rail track that once served the flax factory
Veronika and I outside the gate pillars to the former flax factory, with the original tower behind us
Flax newly planted by the final information board
The flax-processing factory opened in 1935 and operated until 1945. Some 200 Munich Jews and 68 Jewish women from the Łódź in Poland ghetto were brought in to work there in summer 1941. In the autumn they were deported and murdered, and the following winter were replaced by others, including men and women from Poland and the Soviet Union.
They had to pluck the flax, soak it in cold water to soften it up and ferment, loosen the fibres from the woody core and chop them up for processing into yarn which was used for a variety of purposes – including uniforms, backpacks tents and ropes for the Wehrmacht and from it oil was extracted for use in the German navy. It was nasty work, very hard on the hands. The workers were there for long hours and beatings were regular. Vera ended up being deported on a Straftransport (‘penal transport’), very probably because she was too weak to work.
They were given a very meagre pay or else nothing in return for the rough existence that constituted ‘board and lodging’, and regularly beaten by the foremen and by the German women who worked there. Transgressions could result in death, and no contact was allowed with the public, who must have been aware of the labourers living on camp and arriving by train daily.
The manager would select older or weaker forced labourers for deportation. By autumn 1942 the Jewish forced labour was disbanded and replaced by workers from elsewhere.
Conditions for those forced to work here were harsh in the extreme. Some 90 workers were housed in a barracks on site but others had to travel in – they were not allowed to ride the tram, so had to undertake a long walk to the station in Munich: some Jewish forced labourers travelled from the assembly camp of Milbertshofen. One survivor reminisced that she had to walk five to six hours in addition to the long working day. ‘In the evening I just fall into bed, I’m so tired. Hopefully it won’t take too long, because I can’t go on for much longer.’
The Lohhof memorial website denkmal-lohhof.de has a wealth of information and photos of the flax factory.
There’s work underway to increase awareness of the 300 or so places where slave labour was carried out under the Nazis. Not a lot is known about many of them. Certainly local people would have been aware of the fact that people were being brought in as labourers on a daily basis.
Berg-am-Laim: where Vera spent her last Munich days
That afternoon we cross over Munich to emerge at Josephsburg U-Bahn station, in the eastern suburb of Berg-am-Laim. Near here, the former Kloster der Barmherzigen Schwestern (Sisters of Mercy) monastery, which was used by the Nazis as one of two assembly camps in the city (the other being Milbertshofen) for those awaiting eventual deportation.
The Neumeyers’ former lodger and great friend Julius Kohn, nicknamed ‘Onki’ by the family. He was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.
I’ve been steered here by two bits of information. First, the Munich City Archive website, which states that Julius Kohn, the Neumeyers’ lodger and friend who was known to the family as ‘Onki’, was incarcerated here from 29 June 1942. And second, a letter from Vera dated 10 July 1942, three days before her deportation, stating ‘We’re leaving on Monday morning. Onki is here, but put on reserve.’ That confirms Onki – Julius Kohn – and Vera were in the same place: the Sisters of Mercy Monastery in Clemens August Strasse, Berg-am-Laim.
We don’t have precise dates as to when Vera was working at Lohhof, and when she was moved from the apartment she was sharing with the Köbner family at Thorwaldsenstrasse, in the western suburbs, to this assembly camp. She was also at some time doing slave labour in a market garden in the southern suburbs.
A typed Nazi document records that of the 50 who were deported on 13 July 1942, 27 were at Clemens August Strasse and six were actually living in the barracks at Lohhof. Vera’s address is still given as Thorwaldsenstrasse, where she had been since late 1938 or early 1939, but in the light of the article quoted above this does not seem to be correct, and she had moved – perhaps only days before her deportation – to Clemens August Strasse.
We wander along the narrow street, and St Michael’s Church (Pfarrkirche St-Michael) comes into view. Only when we reach the entrance do we spot the former gateway, an art nouveau structure – presumably dating from around 1900. It’s blocked by a huge stone cube and we notice the Star of David carved in the bottom corner with the dates 1941-43. There’s no explanation about what it is. No one is around, but others have placed stones on the top as a memorial, so I do the same.
Inside the grounds, the former monastery buildings now house a home for the elderly. In the middle is the church: the door is open and inside is a real surprise – a magnificent baroque interior by the great church designer Johann Michael Fischer. The whole place seems almost bizarrely benign in its tranquility: not a hint of what happened there during 1941-43.
The poignancy of a mere street sign: Clemens-August Strasse, where hundreds were detained between 1941 and 1943
Approaching the former Sisters of Mercy monastery
The memorial outside the monastery grounds: a huge stone cube blocking the former entrance
Detail on the memorial: a Star of David with the dates 1941-43
Next to the stone memorial, this plaque remembers Dr Else Behrend Rosenfeld, who worked as a Jewish social worker and was in charge at Clemens-August Strasse. Fearing deportation, she went underground in Berlin in 1942, then fled to Switzerland, where she published her diary in 1945, describing her experiences under the Nazis
The Sisters of Mercy monastery, Clemens-August Strasse, Berg-am-Laim. It is now a retirement home.
The monastery church, with decoration by the renowned baroque architect Fischer
Alois Weiner: the great mutual friend
My uncle Raymond wrote to his sister (my mother) Ruth while stationed with the British army in Germany – he managed to get leave to visit Munich and Dachau in November 1946. While there he went to visit Alois Weiner in Moosburg and the two of them got on very well. It was the first time they had met.
Alois, Raymond recorded in a letter to Ruth, was with Vera’s husband Hans and her father Martin in Theresienstadt. Only Alois survived.
I look at that very long letter of Raymond’s from November 1946: one important detail has until now eluded me – ‘Er erzählte mir vieles über Mutter – er hat mit ihr vor der Deportierung in Lohhof arbeiten müssen.’ – ‘he (Alois) tells me a lot about Mother – he was made to work with her in Lohhof before deportation’. So they were both there, together: further confirmation that she was there.
Part of Raymond’s 18-page letter to Ruth in November 1946, describing his meeting with Alois Weiner, a man who befriended Vera just before her deportation and Hans while in Theresienstadt. Alois tells him that he and Vera were together in Lohhof (on the fourth line is the word Lohof [sic]).
Alois was from Moosburg in Bavaria, and survived Theresienstadt, returning to his home town after liberation in 1945, where he took part in the democratic reconstruction of municipality and became deputy mayor. He died in 1953.
Alois Weiner
Alois’ shop in Moosburg
Alois’ photo on his identity card
Alois wrote to a mutual family friend Gustav Güldenstein in July 1946 with the news that Hans Neumeyer had taught Czech music students in Theresienstadt and died there.
The Munich city archive records that he was at the Sisters of Mercy monastery in Berg-am-Laim immediately before being deported to Theresienstadt.
So that leads me to think this is how it happened: Alois meets Vera, originally either at Lohhof or the Sisters of Mercy Monastery in Berg-am-Laim. They were both at both places, but I don’t know which came first. Vera learns that she will be deported to somewhere in Poland, so starts learning Polish from some of the Poles in Lohhof. She knows also that Alois will be deported five days later than her to Theresienstadt, in Czechoslovakia, where her former husband Hans was deported the previous month (Vera and Hans divorced in 1941; Hans was having an affair with his secretary Dela, but he and Vera still seem to be on good terms). He is blind so Vera asks Alois to look out for him in Theresienstadt. This Alois does; he is with Hans in the final days of Hans’ life in 1944, and writes to a mutual family friend Gustav Güldenstein after the war with the news of Hans’ death. Alois returns some of Hans’ possessions to Dela, who passes them on to the family. These are two photos of the children (presumably to show to other people, as Hans could not see them) and an extraordinary poem written by his blind sister Irma in Theresienstadt in 1943 which I found among the family papers in 2022.
Back in 2021, when I didn’t know about Vera being at Lohhof with Alois, I made a 11-minute talk about Alois Weiner where I’ve explored the links between him and my grandparents Vera and Hans: you can listen to it here.
Although Hans and Vera had tragic fates, it’s very good to know Alois Weiner touched them with his humanity.
Tatty scraps of paper bearing something written in German long ago, in pencil or crayon, with abundant crossings-out… I had filed these away not realising their importance. I’d taken them to be the fruits of someone’s Sunday afternoon copying out a very long poem.
Then last year I gave them a second glance. There was unmistakably a Star of David drawn on one page. Then – how could have I missed it? – the inscription ‘Irma Kuhn B09’.
Irma Kuhn was the elder sister of my grandfather Hans Neumeyer. The mystery figure – my mother and uncle didn’t tell me anything about her. All I knew was that she used to visit the family from time to time and she eventually went blind and at the age of 68 was deported from a Jewish nursing home in Munich (Hermann-Schmid Strasse 5) in 1942 to Theresienstadt. She perished there the following year.
I asked the Theresienstadt Memorial Museum what ‘B09’ might mean. They replied: “Presumably it is the designation of the room at the attic B (there were also attics A and C) in the house Q 319 where she died. House Q 319/L 404 was paying for a home for the blind.”
I sent a copy of the poem – or poems as there now seemed to be two of them – to historian Lauren Liederman, who is of American nationality but lives in Görlitz with her husband and two young children and is dedicated to preserving the Jewish history of Görlitz (where my grandmother Vera and great aunts lived with their parents, the Ephraims, up to 1922). Lauren passed it onto someone who could decipher the handwriting, and then set about translating it.
And then a very excited message from her: “OMG Tim! Irma’s poem! Had me crying!”
Then we realised it was an artefact from Theresienstadt: the poem was written by Irma, and at the end dedicates it to Hans, her brother. Both were blind, so Irma dictated it to someone called Rina.
Erstmals nach persönlichem Diktat
Zu Papier gebracht im Ghetto Theresienstadt unweit Prag
Nach zehnmonatiger Gefangenschaft von deiner Schwester
Rina
(Von der Rimis)
Written for the first time according to personal dictation. Put on paper in the Theresienstadt Ghetto not far from Prague, after ten months of imprisonment, by your sister
Written out by Rina (of the Rimis)
Then the question arose how the poem survived. I got the answer in June, when among the papers and letters received from the extraordinary stash found in the Hellman’s basement in Sweden (see previous post) was a letter from Alois Weiner, who had befriended Hans’ during their incarceration in Theresienstadt. Alois survived the Holocaust and wrote to Dela Blakmar, my grandfather’s secretary and lover, after the war. I had previously only seen Dela’s typed out copy of the letter, which omitted the opening paragraph that said the only things that survived of Hans’ from Theresienstadt were photos of this children (my mother and uncle) and two poems. Alois kept those items and passed them on to Dela. So that is how the poems got to us.
The poem
Actually it’s one poem but written out twice – the first time with lots of corrections and amendments, and the second time as a fair copy. It is titled Stern unter Sternen (“Star among Stars”).
Hans Neumeyer, around 1937
What surprised me was its heartfelt Jewish sentiment. I didn’t realise Irma and Hans were such close adherents to the religion, nor that Irma was apparently a woman of great intellect. And clearly they found each other in Theresienstadt. Hans married my grandmother Vera in 1920 – she was the daughter of a Lutheran Christian-Jewish couple, and was herself a devout Lutheran. Hans and Vera brought up their children Ruth (my mother) and Raymond as Lutherans. Hans didn’t attend a synagogue – as a blind man it would have been very difficult travelling to Munich for the purpose (there was no synagogue where they lived, in the town of Dachau). But he still regarded himself as a Jew: ‘As I am a Hebrew, the political situation in Germany has made impossible any activity as a music teacher as well as a composer ‘.
Did Irma perhaps write the poem intending Hans to set music to it? He was surrounded by a coterie of music students (see an earlier post on this blog), who took lessons from him and called him ‘the professor’ – they would have been willing to help.
I present it here in its original German, so you can get an idea of its scansion and rhyme, and then with an annotated literal translation by Lauren. Huge thanks to her for helping identify this artefact.
The photos are all ones I took on a visit to Theresienstadt in 2001, when we lit candles in memory of our family members in the crematorium.
Note: the first version below is the German version. If you have your browser preferences set to translate to English automatically then it may appear in auto-translated English, so I advise you turn that option off on your preferences while reading this.
Stern unter Sternen
1. Besiegelt ist das Schicksal Befehl vom hohen Rat daß nit gerett’ soll werden Der ganze Judenstaat. Schon graut’s in grauen Mauern schon grinst Gevatter Tod. Vernichtung ist die Losung Vernichtung das Gebot Die Sense umgeschultert So naht der Sensenmann Er kürt sich seine Opfer Und legt die Sichel an
2. Wir zahlen die Tribute Zoll der Vasallenzeit Wir zahl’n mit Herzensblute das Blut zum Himmel schreit. 3. Sah’ Ritter, Tod und Teufel die Ausgeburt der Höll, Vermisch’ den Sensensingsang Mit deinem Hohngegröhl Geklirre und Geklapper Welch Dissonanzenklang Geklirre und Geklapper zum letzten Abgesang. 4. Dann meist’re deine Arbeit Mal’ deine Stigmen hin Und drück die Totenmale auf jede bleiche Stirn. Wir stehen still und weinen die Tränen löschen aus
Wir stehen still und beten Verklärung wird daraus.
5. Getragen sind die Särge zu eb’ner Erd’ geschickt Der Rabbi der Gemeinde Die Trostesworte spricht. (Diese erste Strophe 5 ist durchgestrichen. Es folgt eine neue) 5. Wir hungern, darben, frieren, Erleb’n der Klagen zehn. Was könnte außer Polen Uns übles noch geschehn Getragen sind die Särge Zu eb’ner Erd’ geschickt Der Rabbi der Gemeinde Die Trostesworte spricht. 6. Wir stehen an den Särgen Darob das Bahrentuch Geschmückt im Stern der Sterne Sind wir nicht reich genug? Er strahlt mit gold’nem Glanz Im Dunkeln umsomehr Er strahlt mit den Milliarden Am weiten Äthermeer.
7. Das Antlitz gegen Osten Die Sonne im Zenit Rotgold in Sonnbrandsschwaden die Erde überglüht Wir schauen Gottes Wunder voll Inbrunst im Gemüt Bis das die Sonne unter Fernab der Tag entflieht.
8. Dann falt ich meine Hände weiß sie von Sünde rein beseligt wonnetrunken hüllt mich ein Schlummer ein Wir werden nicht vergehen Wir werden fortbestehen Wir werden weiterleben Und Leben um zu sehn.
9.
Mir träumt ein Mene-Tekel Ich deut’ der Runen Schrift Im Schemen ewiger Jude zerbricht Judäa nicht. Ich höre Sphfärenklänge Vernimm der Harfe Lied Und schmück mich mit dem Sterne In dem Judäa siegt. Er führt uns einst von Hause Er führt uns einst zurück Ein Herd, ein Tisch, ein Lager Sei unser höchstes Glück.
10. Und Friede, Friede, Friede, verbreitet sich im Raum Und Friede, Friede, Friede bedeutet dieser Traum Und Friede, Friede, Friede hat uns der Herr geschenkt In Allmacht, Gnade, Güte, behüt, geschirmt, gelenkt Wer nie im seinem Leben Um Freiheit wurd gebracht Kennt nicht der übel größtes Kennt nicht der Freiheit Macht.
11. Allgütiger, Allvater, du hörtest unser Flehen Wer so wie wir erniedrigt, Den kannst du nur erhöhen Wohlan denn, Schwestern, Brüder In Ghettos nah und fern vernehmt die große Kunde Es naht der Tag des Herrn
12. Auf Gletschers höchsten Höhn Klafft drohend Spalt und Kluft Lawinen donnern krachen Auf eines Hamans (?) Gruft. Wir aber Schwestern, Brüder Wir rüsten jetzt zum Fest Das Fest zum Wiedersehen Das Gott uns feiern lässt.
13. Nehmt Euer Hoheitszeichen Aus König Davids Hand Und zeugt euch seiner würdig Und seinem Unterpfand. Im Geist gebannt was immer uns zugefügt der Mob So roll’n die Ghetto Ghettobilder Vorbei im Zoetrop
14. Geknebelt und geknechtet Wir wanken, weichen nicht Wir trotzen den Gewalten In tiefster Zuversicht
15. Entfremdet und entrechtet Volk ohne Raum und Brot Verharrend bis ins letzte In schwerster Schicksalsnacht
16. So wählt ich jene Weise So seelenvoll versiehts, Zu Leitwort und Geleite Zum Ghettoklagelied.
17.
Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß Wer nie in kummervollen Nächten Auf seinem Bett weinend saß Der kennt euch nicht ihr himmlischen Mächte AMEN
Literal translation in English:
Star Among Stars
1.
Sealed is the fate
The order from the high council
is that there shall be no salvation
for any of the Jewish people.
Already the grey walls are shuddering
and the Grim Reaper leers.
Destruction is the watchword
Destruction is the order
With a scythe around his shoulder
the Grim Reaper approaches.
He chooses his victims
And brandishes his scythe.
2.
We pay tribute
Duty of servitude
We pay with blood of our heart
Our blood cries to heaven.
3.
I saw the knight, death and devil
the spawn of hell,
Mingle the scything song
With your mocking roar
Crash and clatter
What dissonance sound
Clattering and crashing
until the very last swan song.
The first line of verse three refers to this work of 1513 by Albrecht Dürer: Knight, Death and the Devil (Ritter, Tod und Teufel)
4.
Then mostly your work
Paint your stigmas
And press the death marks
On each pale brow.
We stand still and weep
The tears extinguish
We stand still and pray
Transfiguration forms from it.
5. (this verse was crossed out)
Carried are the coffins
Sent into the ground
The rabbi of the congregation
Speaks the words of comfort.
5.
We hunger, we starve, we freeze,
Suffering lamentations times ten.
What else could happen to us
What evil can still befall us
The coffins are carried
Sent into the ground
The rabbi of the congregation
Speaks words of comfort.
6.
We stand by the coffins
Whereof the pall
Adorned in the star of stars
Are we not rich enough?
It shines with golden brilliance
In the dark all the more
It shines with the billions
On the wide ethereal sea.
7.
Facing towards the east
The sun at its zenith
Red gold in sunburn swathes
The earth glows
We watch God’s miracle
Full of fervour in the mind
Until the sun sets
Far away the day flees.
8.
Then I fold my hands
I know them clean from sin
Blissfully drunk with joy
A slumber envelops me
We will not perish
We will endure
We will live on
And live to see.
I dream of a Mene-Tekel
[Mene-Tekel: Old Testament reference to the words that appeared on the wall during Belshazzar’s Feast (Daniel 5:25), interpreted by Daniel to mean that God had doomed the kingdom of Belshazzar]
I read the runes’ writing
In the scheme of eternal Judea
Judea does not break.
9.
I hear the sounds of the spheres
I hear the harp’s song
And I am adorned with the star
Within which Judea triumphs.
It leads us once from home
And will lead us back once more.
To our hearth, our table, our camp
It is our highest happiness.
10.
And peace, peace, peace, will spread in the room
Peace signifies this dream
It is peace that the Lord has given us
In omnipotence, grace, goodness,
protected, shielded, guided
He who never in his life
Was deprived of freedom
Does not know the greatest evil
He does not know the power of freedom.
11.
Most gracious Father of all, you have heard our plea
Those who are humiliated like us,
Only you can lift them up
Come then, sisters, brothers
In ghettos near and far
Hear the great news
The day of the Lord is near
12.
On the glacier’s highest peaks
Gaps and chasms are threatening to open
Avalanches will crash
On Haman’s tomb.
[Haman’s tomb- a Haman who is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther for which Purim is celebrated. He sought to annihilate the Jews.]
But we sisters, brothers
We now prepare for the feast
The feast of reunion
That God makes for us to celebrate.
13.
Take your sovereign sign
From King David’s hand
And bear witness to him
And his pledge.
In the spirit we are bound
through whatever will be inflicted on us by the mob
So rolls the ghetto, and its horror
Like in the wheel of the zoetrope
[A zoetrope was a machine invented in 1834 by William George Horner, was an early form of motion picture projector that consisted of a drum containing a set of still images, turned in a circular fashion in order to create the illusion of motion.]
14.
Gagged and chained
We waver, yet do not yield
We defy the forces
In deepest faith
15.
Alienated and disenfranchised
People without room and bread
Persevering to the last
In our heaviest night of fate
16.
So I choose that way
So soulfully do I do it,
To guide and escort others
Through our ghetto lament.
A drawing by Leo Haas (the only artist prisoner to survive Theresienstadt; he died in 1983) of sick bay – we think the figure in dark glasses bottom right may be Hans Neumeyer
17.
He who never ate his bread with tears
He who never in sorrowful nights
Sat on his bed crying
He does not know you, and your heavenly powers.
AMEN
A literary – or musical – quotation
The words of the last four lines are Goethe’s, not Irma’s. She is quoting from his work Wilhelm Meister. Those words were set to music by Schubert, as part of a song cycle Gesänge des Harfners aus Wilhelm Meister (Songs of the Harpist from Wilhelm Meister). It seems very likely that song was familiar to both of them.
There is a second verse which Irma omits:
The original:
Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein, Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden, Dann überlasst ihr ihn der Pein: Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.
The translation: You bring us into life; you deem the poor man guilty, then you leave him in his agony: for all guilt is avenged on earth.
To hear Schubert’s song, in a poignant performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, click here.
Music from the Schubert song cycle quoting “Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß/Wer nie in kummervollen Nächten/ Auf seinem Bett weinend saß/ Der kennt euch nicht ihr himmlischen Mächte” from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister – very likely a song known to both Hans and Irma. This is one of three settings Schubert made to the words.
Special thanks to Lauren Leiderman for her help.
If anyone has any extra information or observations about the wording in this poem please let me know (timothy.locke@talktalk.net), or add a comment below.
Of our family, four were deported by the Nazis to their deaths: Vera Neumeyer and Hans Neumeyer (my grandparents), Irma Kuhn (my great aunt; Hans’s sister) and Martin Ephraim (my great-grandfather and Vera”s father). Three departed from Munich and one from Berlin – all in third-class train carriages rather than cattle trucks.
Here is what I have been able to piece together about those last days. I have mentioned other people on the transports with the hope that descendants of those victims might find this post through internet searches – to date, I’ve had some remarkable messages from those who have found this blog while googling the names of others.
My grandparents and their children (my mother and uncle) had been thrown out of their house in Dachau on 8 November 1938 the night before Kristallnacht. They moved into shared accommodation in Munich. Six months later, the children left to England on a Kindertransport, never to see their parents again.
My great-grandfather Martin was a patriotic German Jew and a rich philanthropist, whose late wife was a Protestant. For many years after the Nazis came to power he was in denial: ‘Germans could never do a thing like that…’. had left his comfortable country house in Silesia and decided it would be safer in Berlin.
I’ve plotted the main places in Munich mentioned here on the map:
Hans Neumeyer: my grandfather – 4 June 1942 to Theresienstadt, transport II/02
As I have recorded previously on this blog we know quite a lot through fellow prisoners Walter Hirschberg and Tommy Mandl, about Hans’s time in Theresienstadt – including his teaching of music to young students and the day of his death.
The Stadtarchiv München (Munich City Archive) website has a list of deportations with biographies of each passenger. The train was numbered II/02 (the Roman numerals II denoting Munich as the departure point), leaving on 4 June 1942 – this was a day before his sister Irma’s deportation and just two days after the very first transportation of German Jews (from Berlin) to Theresienstadt, and carried 50 mostly elderly or sick Jews – all of them perished in the Holocaust. Between then and liberation on 15 April 1945 the SS and police authorities deported around 58,000 Jews there from Germany.
Hans’s address on the deportation list is given as Thorwaldsenstrasse 5, where he and Vera moved in on 22 December 1938 along with their children. He and Vera had separated in 1941, though on amicable terms. Vera is also shown as living from this address, but I have discovered that this is incorrect. It is possible that Hans was moved to another location – perhaps the Jewish hospital where his sister Irma had been placed.
Deported: Emma Abstein, Franziska Arndt*, Philipp Batscha*, Mina Bergmann*, Marie Bernheim*, Franziska Brückner*, Regina Renate Brückner*, Siegfried (Itzig) Cohn*, Dr Julius Fackenheim, Helene Feibusch*, Klara Fischer*, Jacob Franc, Babette Grünfeld*, Hilda Gundelfinger, Samuel Gundelfinger*, Benjamin Hammelbacher, Minna Hirschberg, Emanuel Kocherthaler (he was blind, like Hans), Rosa Kocherthaler, Gerson Landmann, Sofie Landmann, Erna Marx, Friedrich Siegmund*, Salomon Leonhard Mohr*, Vally Philippine Neubauer*, Hans Neumeyer, Paula Neuwirth, Rosa Rebekka Neuwirth, Berta Offenstadt, Julius Joel Offenstadt*, Berta Okuniewski*, Maria Oppenheimer*, Johanna Pollak, Rosalie Karolina Preuss*, Eugen Josef Reis*, Samuel Abraham Sandbank*, Sara Sandbank, Selma Susi Schlorch*, Lina Schloss*, Alice Henriette Schmidt (noted as having to pay a ‘voluntary’ contribution of 10,000 Reichsmarks on 28 January 1942 to finance the Milbertshofen concentration camp near Munich), Artur Schoenberg, Evelyne Schoenberg*, Isabella Swed, Klara Stein, Marja Wadler*, Enslein Weikersheimer*, Louise Weil*, Sophie Weil*, Jeanette Weiss (* denotes address as 5 or 7 Hermann-Schmid Strasse, the Jewish hospital where Irma, Hans’s sister, was residing; see below).
Some of those deported from Munich to Theresienstadt with Hans Neumeyer (Stadtarchiv München)
Hans died on 18 May 1944 – this was strangely timely, as it may have saved him from the ordeal of Auschwitz. The Nazis had been preparing Theresienstadt for a visit by the Red Cross on 23 June, and in preparation for this event between 15 and 18 May deported 7,503 prisoners to Auschwitz to lessen overcrowding. The Red Cross visit was a propaganda coup for the Nazis, which completely took in the Red Cross: weak prisoners were screened from view, a football match with cheering crowds was put on for the benefit of the visitors; children were fed up and told to look happy; prisoners beautified the camp with gardens and rehearsed the opera Brundibár, composed by the prisoner Hans Krása (who was quite possibly one of Hans’s musical acquaintances); housing was painted up and presented as a ‘model village’. The Red Cross departed with the illusion that Theresienstadt was a safe, benevolent haven. Most of those Jews forced to stage this sham presentation of ‘normal life’ were taken to Auschwitz immediately afterwards and murdered there.
A prisoner’s drawing of inmates in the sick bay in Theresienstadt. The blind man third from the right in the bottom corner resembles Hans.
Irma Kuhn: my great-aunt – 5 June 1942 to Theresienstadt, transport II/03
Irma is the mystery character of the four family members to have been deported. Born on 13 August 1874 she was one of two sisters of my grandfather Hans Neumeyer – nearly 13 years his elder. My mother hardly spoke about her although my uncle Raymond can remember her reading them bedtime stories, and she did make visits to the Neumeyers in Dachau. In 1899 she married Heinrich Kuhn, and they first lived in Grünstadt, Pfalz before moving to Munich; he died in 1924 when she was 50. She subsequently moved to the Alpine resort of Garmisch, where her sister Betty Braun lived but in 1935 moved back to Munich. Betty herself was forced to leave home.
Writing to her children – my mother and uncle – in November 1939, my grandmother Vera records visiting Irma and reading the children’s letters to her.
Her deportation on transport II/03 took place just a day after her brother Hans had been taken to the same place. The Stadtarchiv München provides a transport list of her deportation: most deportees have a photograph, but there is none for Irma. She is described as 90% blind – so in Theresienstadt she may well have been put among the other blind people, including Hans. It seems likely that she tried to meet up with him if they were not put in the same place – but Theresienstadt was a huge ghetto, and finding someone in the chaos might have been extremely difficult. She lived there for eleven months, dying on 14 May 1943. None of the other 50 deportees survived.
Deported: Elisabeth Bach*, David Anton Beck*, Johanna Beck*, Henriette Blum, Pauline Brader, Flora Fromm*, Klara Gärtner*, Ludwig Gerngross, Mathilde Gruber*, Flora Grünsfelder, Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser, Henriette Gutmann*, Ida Hellmann*, Ludwig Herz*, Johanna (Jeanette) Hiller*, Rosa Hiller*, Alfred Hönigsberger*, Berta Jordan*, Moritz Kugler*, Rosa Kugler*, Mathilde Kirschbaum*, Emil Eliahu Kuhn, Irma Kuhn*, Wilhelm Lewes*, Hermann Liebmann*, Irma Bernhardine Löwenstein*, Sophie Löwenstein*, Pauline Machol*, Melanie (Malwine) Marx*, Eduard Neuhöfer*, Hugo Oestreicher*, Amalie Oettinger*, Dr Leopold Pappenheimer, Anna Charlotte (Lotte) Parisian*, Charlotte Perutz, Berta Reizenstein*, Anna Loba Ripstein (also Rybsztein)*, Gittel (Gisela) Rosenfeld*, Berta (Belka) Schnapp, Heinrich Schnapp*, Martin Schwarz*, Ludwig Sinn*, Karolina Sommer*, Selma Sonder*, Abraham Thau*, Elise Emma Wahle*, Julie Katharina Weiss*, Joseph Werner*, Regina Wolpe* (* denotes address as 5 or 7 Hermann-Schmid Strasse, the Jewish hospital where Irma was residing).
Some of the other deportees who travelled with Irma from Munich to Theresienstadt on 6 June 1942(Stadtarchiv München)
General view of Theresienstadt – an 18th-century walled barracks town used by the Nazis as a prison ghetto and holding camp. During the war 33,000 inmates died there, mostly from malnutrition and disease. Many more were taken from there to death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Views of Theresienstadt on my visit in 2001
Abandoned railway track in the centre of Theresienstadt
The crematorium
Candles we lit on our visit to commemorate the relatives who died there
Much of Theresienstadt is like this: eerily quiet
The Jewish hospital and nursing home: Hermann-Schmid Strasse 5&7, Munich
We have three addresses for Irma in 1935-36: she moved from Garmish to Römerstrasse 1 on 18 March 1935; then to Reichenbachstrasse 27 on 1 June 1936; then an old people’s home – IKG Altenheim – at Klenzestrasse 4 where she was from 31 July 1936. From 13 June 1941 she was living in the Israelitisches Kranken- und Nuristerheim (Jewish hospital and nursing home) , a hospital for elderly Jews at 7 Hermann-Schmid Strasse, Munich, and it was from there at the age of 77 that she was deported with the other residents to Theresienstadt on 6 June 1942. This hospital was founded in 1910 on the adjacent site, 5 Hermann-Schmid Strasse, and was later enlarged. Until 1933 all denominations were allowed in; after that time Jews were not allowed in state-run hospitals, and after the Kristallnacht of 1938 the Gestapo made sure that only Jews would use the building. Its closure in June 1942 saw all the patients, as well as the doctors and nurses, taken to Munich’s Südbahnof for deportation. The buildings were destroyed by allied bombing in 1944.
Klenzestrasse 4, Munich – early 20th century, where Irma briefly lived. Formerly a dining establishment it was converted into a retirement home for Jews in the late 1920s (Stadtarchiv München)
Monument to the deported Jews from the Jewish hospital in Hermann-Schmid Strasse
Vera Charlotte Neumeyer: my grandmother – 13 July 1942, to Auschwitz or Warsaw
My family’s information received in 1945 and assumed correct until two years ago was that Vera was deported to Piaski, from where she was probably taken to the nearest death camp, Majdanek. But recent evidence has turned that upside down.
According to the Stadtarchiv München, of the 35 transports from Munich during the war, 30 were to Theresienstadt, two to Auschwitz, one to Piaski, one to Kaunas and one to ‘East (Auschwitz)’. The last-mentioned is an unknown quantity, and is the train Vera travelled on. Immediately after the war it was announced she went to Piaski – but that was the train in April 1942 she was originally intended for. Following an appeal, her departure date was postponed until 13 July 1942, and there were no trains to Piaski from Munich then. I’ve been looking for years for the answer, and I think this is the closest we can get. For more on this see my previous post which includes her letter written on the train. In her letter she describes being taken in a truck to the freight station. The Stadtarchiv München explains that apart from the very first two deportations, all the trains left either from the main railway station or from Laim freight station – that tells us she left from Laim (marked on the map, above).
So what we now know is that she definitely didn’t go to Piaski or Theresienstadt, despite what some other official archives say. There was a veil of secrecy around Auschwitz, and it is very possible that for that purpose the authorities did not want the destination known.
Correspondence from authorities mentioning either Piaski/Lublin or Theresienstadt as the place where Vera died. Nowhere is it mentioned that the deportation was in fact to either Auschwitz or Warsaw. (Arolsen archives)
Letters enquiring the fate of Vera from her children, Raymond (28 September 1945, writing from Goslar, where he was stationed as an interpreter in working for the British military police); and Ruth (5 March 1946, writing from Cambridge). (Arolsen archives)
The deportees
As with many other transports, the number was exactly 50. The Stadtarchiv München gives the addresses of all of them. I have grouped them into where they were deported from.
Four people are shown with other addresses, but like Vera the record may be incomplete and they may have spent their final days in either the Sisters of Mercy monastery or Milbertshofen:
Franz Brach (Wagnerstrasse 3 – IKG apprentice home / overnight accommodation); Walter Faust; Fritz Kupfer (interned in Dachau concentration camp August 1936 to March 1937 in 1940 he did forced labour with the paving master Alfred Mayer; his parents were deported to Theresienstadt six days after Hans Neumeyer, where the father only survived a few weeks; his mother was murdered in Treblinka); Malwine Emilie Katharina Porsche.
Deportees from the Sisters of Mercy monastery, Clemens Auguststrasse 9
According to the Munich archive, 30 were taken from Clemens Auguststrasse, Berg am Laim, the monastery of the Sisters of Mercy, used as a prison and evacuated by the Geheime Staatspolizei München that day. Vera is not listed among them; instead her address is given as Thorwaldsenstrasse 5, where she had been living since 22 December 1938 with the Köbner family. This was the address from which she and Hans wrote to their children in England, and was the official address for all correspondence, apparently right up to 1942.
However, in her letter sent three days before deportation she writes ‘Onki is here’, referring to the family’s good friend and former lodger Julius Kohn. The Munich archive gives his final address from 29 March 1942 as here – Clemens Auguststrasse 9. So that tells us that Vera was here too:
10 July 1942
I am very well. It has proved very advantageous that I know so many people here. They are just wonderful. I experience over and over again the good that this community brings – giving us a strength that is so rare in these times.
Yesterday I handed the copy of my application to a higher ranking Gestapo official. I wonder whether Dora’s visit was successful. [This probably means Vera’s sister was trying to help lodge an appeal on Vera’s behalf].
Don’t worry if you can’t do anything to help – I believe that I won’t be miserable. I’m learning Polish from the girls and we are very well looked after. I’m also getting some provisions for the trip, and am eating up all the sausages, butter and eggs we have in the meantime. I’ve also got sugar cubes and soap powder.
We’re leaving on Monday morning. Onki is here, but put on reserve. Now follows some names of friends who will be deported next week. [Unfortunately the list of names is missing.]
Julius Kohn was deported eight months later, on 13 March 1943, in a cattle truck to Auschwitz. The Sinti and Roma gypsies from Munich were also deported on that train.
On the eve of departure Vera writes (to Dela, Hans’s secretary):
Darling, thank you for all your efforts. I know you have tried everything and failed, and suffered in trying to achieve it. Thanks to Dora [Vera’s sister] too. I cannot and do not wish to write to anybody any more.
Surely there will also on this transport be a number of people to whom I can give support. The thought of this gives me strength, but requires me to be self-composed.
Please let everyone know. Things are so difficult for you now. I am with you, with a thousand good wishes and love that will last forever. And we shall see each other again.
Dela responds on the day of deportation that she has spoken to a couple of the people she was with, indicating that it was possible for Dela to visit Vera there:
So everything has been in vain, this morning was the departure I spoke today to two people who have also been with her a lot – she has always been brave and collected. But it’s hard, very difficult, harder than it was then! but do not say that to your father. She has sent me two more letters – I will enclose a copy for you and also send copies to your father and sister.
Your visit to Munich, though unsuccessful, was not in vain.Vera knows you’ve tried everything and that certainly means a lot to her. For the time being, we do not yet know where the journey is going, but I’ll have that as soon as possible and will of course give you an instant message. And there are very nice people here who will not forget her. As soon as you know the address, we will send all her parcels and if I am not here anymore, it will be made sure that friends will take it in their hands.
Herr W will leave on Thursday, and I will not be able to see him any more, nor will my friend, who has become dear to our hearts. [This is Alois Wiener]
She and Vera, these were the two people here who were close to me. Herr W. and my friend will probably come home – as well as Rebekkus [an unknown person, who is mentioned elsewhere and was also in danger], whose departure has been postponed and who didn’t go with Vera.
To read the original letters in German, click here.
Hans Neumeyer (left) and Gustav Güldenstein in Garmisch in 1930
The other 30 deportees were: Alwine Altmann; Hedwig Bloch; Gretchen Dillenius; Luise Jeanette Einstein; Metha Filip; Paula Flank; Martha Bravmann; Samuel Bravmann; Siegbert Bravmann; Therese Gutmann (father was a privy councillor, and brother the composer Pal Ben-Haim, 1897-1984, worked with the conductor Bruno Walter and lived in Israel); David Herz (tried in vain to emigrate to USA, but his son Herbert managed to do so in 1940, via Panama, and thence to New York – died in 1999); Klara Herz (wife of David Herz); Hanna Holzer (forced in December 1938 to leave Freising, where Stolpersteine were laid for Hanna and her family); Ilse Holzer (daughter of Hanna Holzer; music teacher); Ernestine Löwenherz (husband was murdered at Buchenwald); Alma Rothmann; Esther Lea Sondhelm (mother and husband deported to Piaski and murdered); Jakob Paul Sondhelm (owned Jakob Paul Sondhelm metal company and fought in First World War); Dr Joseph Waldner (studied at the Academy of Music 1912-1921; pianist and expert on opera, particularly Wagner; after 1934 he was the musical director of the puppet stage in the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Munich); Max Weikersheimer; Selma Weikersheimer; Isabella Weil; Julius Weil; Eugenie Weinschenk; Edgar Weiss; Elise Wolf; Ernst Wollner.
The Sisters of Mercy Monastery, Clemens Auguststrasse 9
The monastery at this address, where Vera, Alois and Julius were imprisoned was called Barmherzigen Schwestern, or Sisters of Mercy. The city’s second largest camp for Jews awaiting deportation, it comprised two floors of a building belonging to the monastery. Many of those placed there had to do forced labour, and living conditions were extremely cramped and basic – sisters from the monastery did their best to alleviate the general stress. Deportations took place regularly, as did suicides. Else Behrend-Rosenfeld (1891-1970), a former SPD member and a Jew, acted as a social worker for Munich’s Jews from 1938 to 1942, and was involved with this ‘camp’; she recorded in her diary on July 26, 1942: ‘My life has become hell; I just drag myself through the days with difficulty.’ She hid for two years in Germany before escaping to Switzerland in 1944.
Present-day view of the Barmherzigen Schwestern (Sisters of Mercy) monastery
Thorwaldsenstrasse 5,Munich, in ruins in 1946 following bomb damage: the Köbner residence where the Neumeyers had lived from December 1938 until 1942
Deportees from the Flachröste Lohhof
Seven people were Poles taken from the Flachsröste Lohhof, a flax-processing factory 30km north of Munich in Unterschleissheim – where they had been undertaking forced labour. In the letter she wrote on the train, Vera mentions taking Polish lessons from some of the Poles in preparation for what she thought would be a new life in a work camp in Poland. The seven Poles were: Syma Bainberg; Chana Blumenfeld; Zelda Bonkowska; Proja Buchhalter; Fajgla Choina; Jenta Fuks; Sara Orenstein. Vera was also working there at some time, but the dates are unknown.
Deportees from Milbertshofen
The barrack camp known as Judensiedlung Milbertshofen at Knorrstrasse 148 was erected by Jewish forced labourers in March 1941, using city funds for the construction costs, but the Jewish Cultural Community had to pay for each inmate, and those interred were required to make a ‘voluntary donation’. The camp was designed as a ghetto to take Jews who had been thrown out of their homes to free up accommodation for party members and other ‘deserving cases’. Its 18 wooden barracks were intended for 1,100 prisoners but was often overcrowded, with 1,376 crammed in at its peak. On arriving, Jews were searched and relieved of their valuables. Later in 1941 deportations to Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and Riga began from the camp, which closed in August 1942, after which it was used by BMW to accommodate forced Italian labourers.
Eight were taken for this deportation from Milbertshofen: Dr Julius Hechinger (lawyer, apparently emigrated to South Africa in December 1935 but returned; his son emigrated to USA in 1941 but died February 1944 in US army in Italy; formerly at the Jewish hospital, Hermann-Schmid strasse 7); Isabella Bertha Hummel; Sara Gitla Prajs (one of the 68 Polish Jewish women from the Lodz ghetto who had to do forced labour in the Flachsröste before being transferred to Milbertshofen – she was severely ill-treated there by the SA men from the Aryanization office: her hair was shaved, she was hosed down with cold water and forced to sleep in the camp’s own death chamber); Erna Ester Rubin (her husband was probably interned for a period in Dachau; he also perished in the Holocaust); Else Samson; Wilhelm Samson; Malchen Schülein; Markel Slonimszky; Therese Sternglanz.
Milbertshofen in 1941: new arrivals at the camp (Stadtarchiv München)
Memorial for Milbertshofen camp, Knorrstrasse, Munich
The deportation
The deportees were taken in a truck to a goods rail station in Munich. The transport was designated as a ‘penal transport’. It is not at all clear why Vera should have been assigned to it – perhaps it was just to make up the numbers to a round 50 passengers, as was the total for many transports. Of those 50, 16 were annotated with ‘St’, denoting an enemy of the state.
Vera also mentions in that letter three of the passengers in her compartment:
I occupied a corner place next to the dear Frau Professor Porsche, the widow of a well-known painter, a cultivated and very nice Austrian who attached herself to me on the first day.… Opposite me sit the Samsons.
Frau Porsche (mistyped as Prosche in the version we have) was Malwine Emilie Katharina Porsche: the ‘St’ for ‘enemy of the state’ has been written next to her name on the deportation list. Born in Hungary in 1878, she was the widow of the (Aryan) artist Otto Maria Porsche (1858-1931). Less than three weeks after the Nazis were elected the largest party in March 1933, the Porsches moved from Lotzbeckstrasse 4 to Akademiestrasse 19.
By a remarkable coincidence, a day after I discovered Malwine’s entry and photograph in the Stadtarchiv München, I was contacted by Ronald Kammer, Malwine’s great-nephew, writing from Pennsylvania. He was thrilled to make the connection: he had never seen a photo of Malwine as an adult and had been led to believe by information at the US Holocaust Museum that she perished at Theresienstadt – ‘it brought tears to my eyes’. All he had were family photos from his grandmother’s album – his middle name, Melvin, is a tribute to Malwine, Ronald’s father’s favourite aunt.
(And in another wonderful coincidence, Ronald read the entry in my blog about the Neumeyer’s friends and neighbours, the Wallach family, and told me his mother was great friends with the daughter of Julius Wallach. His family – the Boths, as well as the Wallachs and the Neumeyers all in the early 20th century owned large stores in Munich, so they may have all known each other as prominent figures in Munich’s commerce in decades past.)
Vera and Malwine seemed to have formed a bond. One speculates if they kept together to the very end. If the train went to Auschwitz, they would have suffered the same fate as other Jews who had started to be brought there in huge numbers – taken to the gas chambers, told to undress and leave their possessions outside so they could collect them later, then locked inside for a terrible final few minutes.
The likely alternative was the huge ghetto in Warsaw – the largest of all the Nazi’s ghettos. Just over a week later, trains began to take Jews in cattle trucks in to the newly finished concentration camp of Treblinka. The gas chambers struggled to cope with the vast numbers who were arriving daily, and many Jews were shot on arrival.
Ronald sent me copies of the other pictures below:
Malwine Porsche (Stadtarchiv München)
Malwine (centre) with brother Moritz and sister Elizabeth, taken in Vienna in 1895
The Kammer family. Ronald is certain only of four people: 1st row right Ignatz Kammer (1851-1923), middle row middle
Marie Kammer (1857-1921), back row 2nd from left Helen Kammer (1881-1960), back row right Moritz Kammer (1880-1935); Ronald thinks Malwine Porsche
(1878-1942) is on the left, middle row next to Maria and that Otto Maria Porsche (1858-1931) is seated in the centre of the front row.
The Kammer family (date unknown)
Thought to be a sketch of Malwine Porsche when she married; painted by her husband, Otto Maria Porsche
The Samsons, who sat opposite Vera and Malwine in the train, were Wilhelm Samson, a trader born in 1877, and his wife Else (née Lauchmeier), born 1887. They had lived in Munich since moving there from Stuttgart in 1919; their last address was Rumfordstrasse 8; they were forced to work at the Lohhof flax factory.(Stadtarchiv München)
Martin Ephraim: my great-grandfather – 10-11 January 1944, to Theresienstadt, transport I/105
The cultured, patriotic Martin was a great benefactor, who retired from the extremely prosperous family iron business in Görlitz back in 1911 and eleven years later moved to Schreiberhau (Szklarska Poreba, now in Poland). For years he did not believe that Germany could possibly descend to the depths he did, despite his Jewish status. Eventually, though, he decided it would be safer to move to Berlin as he was too conspicuous in Schreiberhau.
Postcards written to a friend, Felix Hepner, in Vevey, Switzerland, show his Berlin addresses included at Heilbronner Strasse 28 during 1941, with someone called Friedman at Mosel Strasse 10 in 1942, and with Dr Ziegelroth in Prinz Handjery Strasse 76 in 1943. Outside the last of these addresses is now a memorial Stolperstein to one Klara Blumenfeld (née Nussbaum, born 1856), who was deported to Theresienstadt on 28 May 1943 and perished that year on 2 August.
In 1943 he was moved into room 261 of the Jewish Hospital, in Iranischer Strasse – not for medical reasons but because it was used as a holding place.
Here Martin spent his last days before being deported. His daughter (and my great aunt) Marianne (‘Tante Janni’) wrote a note about this period. (Click here for the original text in German; note this is from a photocopy and one or two words off the right margin are not visible – I do not possess the original document.) What we get is an impression of someone loyally German and stubbornly unable to believe what was happening in the outside world:
“In his little bedroom in the Jewish hospital, Iranischer Str 2, with the window barred with wood with almost no view after the constant air-raids, in the far north [of Germany], during the coldest winter in 34 years, he was an example of courage and calm. “I can console others on the way and so will have something to do”, he said, as an admiring nurse wrote to me afterwards.”
Martin and Hildegard Ephraim, around 1930
‘He never wanted to leave his beloved homeland, despite multiple invitations from his son Herbert in America. “I was born here, and I will die here too!” was his constant refrain. And also in his pride he did not want to be dependent on anyone. Meanwhile he did not even receive his small pension from the ironworks any more.’
‘When someone hinted at the atrocities of the Nazis, he always answered ‘That is surely exaggerated. A GERMAN WOULD NEVER DO THAT!’.’
‘In his child-like innocence, he saw only the good in others; his trusting nature could not even imagine the possibility of such crimes on the part of German people!’
‘All his care and love was for us, his children and grandchildren. Many people came to him full of sadness, to ask for his advice and help, and poured their hearts out to him! He helped them all patiently, with words and deeds. What he promised, he did, reliably and punctually. He kept things in scrupulous order, so that everything was always immediately dealt with.’
The Jewish Hospital in Berlin around 1930
Remarkably, the Jewish hospital in Berlin survived the war and still stands, complete with inscription “Krankenaus der Judischen Gemeinde,” (Hospital of the Jewish Community). On Kristallnacht there seems to have been a deliberate policy not to damage the building. In May 2014 I went to the address and imagined him peering out of a window into the street outside.
Martin’s wife Hildegard died in 1932, a year before Hitler’s rise to power. What a tragedy that Martin did not end his days that same year instead of having to suffer a ten-year slide into oblivion.
A postcard Martin sent his friend Felix Hepner from the Jewish hospital on 20 December 1943 (Wiener Library)
The deportation
Some Jews survived the entire war in that hospital, but at the age of 83 Martin was deported on 10 January 1944 on transport I/105 – the Roman numeral I denotes Berlin. This was one of the 123 Alterstransporte – deportations of the elderly. On board were 352 or 353 Jews, five of them under 18, and 208 over 60. They included Jews who had married Aryans.
The train travelled through the night, via Dresden and Aussig, arriving on 11 January. In Theresienstadt many of the older people, including Martin, died of disease or starvation in the appalling conditions. Others were taken to death camps such as Auschwitz.
Martin survived less than three months in Theresienstadt. In an earlier post I have featured his weeks in the ghetto, as described by his friend Walter Hirschberg. His date of death is recorded as 6 April 1944.
A complete list of those deported on this transport can be seen here.
Part of the passenger list of the Alterstransporte I/105 – mostly elderly Jews, deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 10-11 January 1944
Memorial to the Jews deported on this transport, at Grunewald railway station in Berlin. This was the principal station during the war for deporting Jews to the East, and consequently has become a memorial site. However, Martin’s train actually departed from Moabit/Putlitzstrasse station.
Seventy-three years on: Ephraims’ postcards rediscovered
A few weeks back I made a visit to London’s Wiener Library, in Bloomsbury – a few paces from the British Museum (29 Russell Square; www.wienerlibrary.co.uk). It owes its origins to Alfred Wiener (1885-1964), who fought in World War I. He was an academic orientalist and secretary of a Jewish human rights group, and while in Berlin in 1928 he set up a collection of documents charting the development of anti-Semitism. It is the only Holocaust-related institution in the world that predates Hitler’s rise to power.
This was not originally intended as a library but his archive grew rapidly. In 1933 he realised the danger to his family so moved to Amsterdam with his collection. Five years later he packed up the whole lot and moved it to London, where the Wiener Library opened in 1939.
The Tuesday tour
I was drawn to the place after Googling for Martin Ephraim and discovering that the library holds a number items of correspondence written by him during World War II from three addresses in Berlin.
I timed my visit with the highly recommended free Tuesday lunchtime tour of the establishment. Our volunteer guide Kerrstyn showed us to the store rooms: a Hitler Youth colouring book, a Lyons tea sachet concealing a German resistance pamphlet, the family archive of the Neumann family in Essen with a certificate pronouncing the takeover of the Jewish textile factory in 1938. We glimpsed shelves and shelves of this vast collection, including its archive of 17,000 photos.
In the reception hall is this hauntingly sinister board game from the Third Reich. Called “Juden Raus!” (Jews Out), it was manufactured in Dresden in 1936 and bears the legend in the bottom right-hand corner ‘”Auf nach Palӓstina!” (Begone to Palestine!). The rule state: “show your skill with the dice by collecting as many Jews as you can! If you succeed in chasing out 6 Jews you will be the unquestioned victor!”
During the war, Wiener arrived in England and was like many other alien Jews interred in the Isle of Man; meanwhile his parents were trapped in Berlin. He later joined the Home Guard in the Midlands and spent some time in the USA. He was involved in working for the Jewish Relief Unit from 1946 to 1949 and it was not until 1947 that he found out about the deaths of his parents in concentration camps.
The library played an important part in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials, and its resources were also used in the libel case against Holocaust denier David Irving in 2000.
Martin Ephraim’s missives
It was quite something to handle these postcards (and one letter) last touched by a family member in the early 1940s. Dating from 1941 to 1943 they were all addressed to Felix Hepner at the Pension Beau Séjour in Vevey in Switzerland and written by my great-grandfather Martin Ephraim (presumably in that much-cherished fountain pen he kept in Theresienstadt only to lose it to another inmate who ended up on the special transport from there to Switzerland, as described elsewhere on this blog).
They appear to be thanks for various things sent, including tins of sardines and cocoa. In one card he says he knows the whereabouts of two of his daughters, but has no news of Vera (my mother’s mother, whose end in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland was not confirmed until after the end of the war).
The last known correspondence from Martin Ephraim, dated 20 December 1943. He was at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, which astonishingly was in use until the end of the war. From here he was deported on 10 January 1944 to Theresienstadt, where he died in April of the same year.
The addresses are all from Berlin: Moselstrasse 10, Heilbronne Strasse 28 (marked “deportiert” – deported), Iranische Strasse 2 (the Jewish Hospital, described on the previous post in this blog, where he was until being deported to Theresienstadt). The last one, from the Jewish Hospital, room 261, is dated 20 December 1943.
He signs off: “Dein alter Freund, Martin” – your old friend, Martin. I’ve not been able to find out more about Felix and where he slots into the Ephraim story.
A previously unpublished account of life in Theresienstadt: this is a translation of a document written by Dr Hans Walter Hirschberg, transcribed by Marianne Bisi, daughter of Martin Ephraim and sister of Vera Neumeyer (and my great aunt). Marianne, known to my family as Tante Janni, survived the war and lived in Berlin until 1973.
Dr Hirschberg was a friend of Martin Ephraim (my great-grandfather) and his family. He was born a Jew but converted to Christianity. On 10 February 1944 he arrived at Theresienstadt on transport number I/107 from Berlin. He led the Lutheran church within the camp and painted an altarpiece used by Protestants and Catholics. Following liberation he worked at Auschwitz gathering evidence and prosecuting Nazis.
Hirshberg had helped Jews in the underground movement, forging identity papers and helping them get across borders into neutral countries. He was also part of an international resistance movement against Nazis and Italian fascists. Nazis arrested him for his left-wing standing and political/resistance activities rather than for his Jewish background. Other survivors remembered him for his courage, empathy and composure.
This is one of two reports, and as it has more personal detail and seems to have been more intended for the family than the other report (featured previously on this blog), which was also deposited as a public record in Görlitz.
Marianne headed this as “Report of Herr Dr Hirschberg, state youth lawyer, about our beloved father Martin Ephraim’s last days in Theresienstadt, the infamous Nazi concentration camp for Jews, where he was deported on 10 January 1944 at the age of 84.” Salomon Goldschmidt, the trader, could be the same person described on page 19 of a website about his town Eberswalde, which describes a Salomon Goldschmidt (1874-1951) who was in Theresienstadt and was a trader from Eberswalde; his wife Emma died in the camp.
“I arrived in Theresienstadt on 11 February 1944. One of my first calls was to your father. A human wreck staggered towards me. He had noticeably aged since I said farewell to him in the Jewish hospital in Berlin, little more than four weeks before. Above all he had lost his sense of humour, which had never left him in Berlin.”
The reference to the hospital in Berlin is something I’ll be looking at in a later post in this blog.
“The extraordinarily primitive standard of accommodation weighed particularly heavily on him. He was in a so-called sick bay of the Cavalry Barracks, where around 20 elderly men of various backgrounds lay in 2 rows of beds with scarcely 1m between them in a long, stretched-out room. Your father was near the window, so at least he had daylight, and he read enthusiastically. In Berlin, he had got to know again through me former friends from Eberswalde, Salomon Goldschmidt, a self-employed trader with intellectual interests, and his wife. I spent 19 February with them celebrating my son’s birthday and I still remember the joy with which your father consumed the ‘Leckerbissen’ and crispbread with honey I had brought.”
Theresienstadt’s spectacular desolation on my visit in 2001. The town was built as a barracks town in the 18th century and is still lived in, its star-shaped fortifications very much intact. During World War II it served as a Nazi camp, and some 150,000 were held there. Most either died of illness in the camp or were deported to Auschwitz, Treblinka or other extermination camps.
“I mention this to show how primitive the food was. I don’t want to say that we were being systematically starved. But the rations were hardly sufficient for the elderly even with strong stomachs, as they had their food allocated, while those capable of work were accordingly better provided for, and everyone who could collect their own food from the mess had the opportunity to get ‘seconds’ and leftovers.”
“Some time after my arrival I noticed a kind of loss of the will to live in your father. Without any medical reason that I could identify, he stayed in bed and told me that the doctor had advised it, and also that he did not really have any wish to go out any more. A little parcel – from one of you [his daughters Dora and Marianne], if my memory is not mistaken, or from Fraulein Rena [Serena, daughter of Marianne], brought him great joy.”
A receipt for a package received by Martin Ephraim in Theresienstadt on 31 March 1944. Might it be the one referred to in this missive from Dr Hirschberg?
“The last weeks passed waiting in vain for further signs of life. On his birthday, I believe, I found him out of bed for the last time and lying down with Goldschmidt, who was housed one level above him and who, as the oldest person in the room, had a little more space. Again I was able to contribute a little something to the day’s [catering?] arrangements.”
Abandoned rail tracks in Theresienstadt
The lost pen and the Salvation Train
In Theresienstadt, prisoners were not stripped of all their possession as they were in other camps. The fact that Martin Ephraim’s pen was so treasured hints that such items were surely key to retaining one’s identity.
He mentions Gernot: this is Martin’s nephew, and the son of Dora. He died with the German army on the Russian front.
I assumed at first that the reference below to ‘transport to Switzerland’ was a Theresienstadt joke meaning transport to Auschwitz though in fact there was an arrangement for 1200 prisoners to be released from Theresienstadt in 1945. This was orchestrated by the former Swiss president Jean-Marie Musy who negotiated with the German High Command to make a payment of 5 million Swiss francs that had been donated by Jews in the USA. The train (later to be known as the ‘Salvation Train’) departed on 5 February 1945 – the actual date ties in with Hirschberg’s account (click here for the full story):
“When I learned that your brother-in-law, Hans Neumeyer, was also in Theresienstadt, I visited him. He was in a room for those with lung diseases in quite a distant barracks and was bed-ridden. The two could not come to see each other. On his birthday I brought your father a very warm letter from his son-in-law. But then it became clear that he [Martin Ephraim] was rapidly going downhill. One day I heard, from asking about him daily, that he had just quietly died in his sleep (that must have been on 4 April, his sister Ida’s birthday M.B.) [note added by Marianne].”
“His remains had already been removed from the room, the belongings shared out, apart from those which Herr Weiner, an acquaintance of the Neumeyers from Munich, had taken. I took a picture of your father in his forties to bring to you. It was to be lost with a suitcase in Prague. He had entrusted his bed neighbour Seelig with his beautiful fountain pen, but at the last minute arranged for Seelig, who died a few days after your father, to pass the pen on to me. I was to use it but later give it to Gernot. It was quite likely that Gernot was no longer alive at the time. I kept the fountain pen for ten months. Then it needed some minor repairs. A specialist was recommended to me. He delayed the delivery. On 5 February [1945] I went to his accommodation. It was empty! He had been assigned for transport to Switzerland. I went to the place where those on the transport were gathered. With difficulty I found the guy. He was very embarrassed: ‘I cannot get to the pen just now, but I can give you this one as a substitute’. He gave me a really bad one. There was nothing to be done about it.”
Finale
The tragic story of the dumping of the ashes from the crematorium into the river, described below, is one of the much-cited anecdotes about Theresienstadt.
Alfred Philippson, the eminent geographer, who lost his job during the Third Reich. After the war he resumed his major work on Greek landscapes.
A happier ending awaited Professor Philippson, described at the end of this report. Alfred Philippson (1864-1953), was a distinguished geographer and geologist. He was also related to the Ephraims; Lesser Ephraim, Martin’s father, was married to Henrietta Philippson. While in Theresienstadt he wrote his memoir Wie ich zum Geographen wurde.
“Frau Goldschmidt died a few days after your father, also without any particular illness being identified, and poor Neumeyer after a few weeks. I sent some women to read to him, but he was already too frail and sent most of the reading volunteers away without requiring their service.”
Inside the crematorium on my 2001 visit, I lit candles for my grandparents – Hans and Vera Neumeyer – and for Martin Ephraim. All perished in camps – Hans and Martin died here.
“I could not even pay my last respects to him, because I was not informed in time. On the other hand I was present at the cremation of your father. The naturally rather simple coffins, Jews and Christians in separate rooms in a double hall, were put on the bier next to each other and some acquaintances gathered around them.”
“The clergy performed the funeral rites according to the religious customs. Some men then lifted the coffins onto a cart that moved them to the crematorium. Outside the ghetto proper, there was an urn cemetery, with over 25,000 urns, which had to be thrown into the River Eger in the late autumn of 1944. This was one of the most barbaric of all SS orders.”
“I kept up your father’s tradition by visiting Professor Philippson, with whom I kept very much in touch towards the end.”
In June 1945 the city of Bonn picked him up in a private car. I had long-standing family relations with the Philippsons.
“Later I took part professionally in many funeral ceremonies. The Catholic community would recite the entire service during transports to the east. Then the Lutheran minister would take over. These were elderly men, who were strained in winter by these early-morning outdoor missions. Then I turned up and became, if I may say so myself, the winter organiser for both denominations…”
Afterword
I have yet to uncover the details of Hirschberg’s work as a prosecutor after the war, but he later wrote this about his time in Theresienstadt:
One tenth of the Jews who had been interned there belonged to a Christian confession. Some were Protestants, some Catholics. Among these Jews, there was a group of Evangelical Jewish Christians from Holland, four hundred in number that distinguished themselves. They even had a Jewish Christian pastor with them. Many of our ‘church members’ had, although they had been baptized, never really considered being followers of Jesus until they came to Theresienstadt. But here, under the influence of God’s word, many of them were truly converted. Jews who had been Christians in name only became true Christians. Many Mosaic Jews and Jews who had no faith whatsoever found Jesus and were saved in Theresienstadt. I am one of the few survivors from the concentration camp in Theresienstadt. Most of my brothers went home to be with the Lord. But my Saviour saved me out of this camp so that I might proclaim the wonderful things that He performed among those who were in “the valley of the shadow of death.”
Despite the hellish overcrowding and misery in Theresienstadt, stories abound of the humanity and kindness between fellow prisoners. One such record comes from the violinist Thomas Mandl (1926-2007), an aspiring virtuoso violinist. Mandl, also an author and an inventor, became a pupil of my grandfather Hans Neumeyer while in the camp. Following the publication of articles in the Süddeutsche Zeitung reporting journalist Hans Holzhaider’s research on the deported families of Dachau, he wrote some moving recollections of Hans Neumeyer in Theresienstadt for the newspaper Landkreis Dachau, 21/22 July 1984.
Theresienstadt survivor Thomas Mandl later in life
The 16-year old Mandl, along with his 17 year-old friend Hans Ries, knew him in Theresienstadt from summer 1942. Ries was the first to meet him, through his camp duties in the ‘Ordnungsdienst’ which included taking food to the sick and those unable to fetch it themselves, and making sure that others did not steal from them.
They met at the camp’s home for the blind: Ries was forever whistling themes from Bach fugues and Mandl guessed that Neumeyer would have noticed him because of that. Ries became his pupil, paying in soup or bread when he had it – but the lessons continued even when none was available. Although blind, Neumeyer survived nearly two years in the camp before his death in May 1944: his teaching work was surely part of that survival strategy.
Music lessons from the “Professor”
Neumeyer’s pupils called him ‘The Professor’. Mandl – an aspiring virtuoso violinist – wanted lessons too but was so continually hungry that he wondered if he would be able to spare the ‘payment’. Fortunately he too got work carrying food, and his parents, also in the camp, encouraged him to take the lessons, though they worried that his carrying the heavy soup cans would damage his hands and impair his ability to play the violin.
At his first lesson Mandl had conflicting feelings. He had never been close to a blind person before, and shuddered at his restless brown eyes moving behind his dark glasses. But he was struck by how Neumeyer received his bowl of vegetable soup gratefully, but without showing the usual excesses of hunger – he reached for his spoon (he always knew where it was) and ate in an ‘aesthetic’ way, unhurriedly but with precision.
Neumeyer’s teaching was very methodical and well targeted, always with an aim in mind. Mandl’s lessons covered basic four-part and eight-part harmony exercises, eight-beat physical exercises, ‘intonation’ and rhythmic exercises. Unusually for the time, he taught harmony and counterpoint together, in parallel rather than as separate disciplines with harmony coming first. They were soon working in different keys, and going onto modulations and contrapuntal exercises.
Mandl did his homework very conscientiously, using his violin. When he brought his work to the lesson he would play each line horizontally in separate parts, then each chord vertically. Mandl was impressed that he had to do this only once. Neumeyer would comment very precisely on individual notes and chords, identifying shortcomings and asking Mandl to suggest how the composition could be improved.
Hans Ries, who had known no music theory before his lessons with Neumeyer, progressed to studying musical style from the Baroque to the Romantic and all branches of 20th-century music, and started to compose systematically, until he was put on a transport away from Theresienstadt in the summer of 1943: Mandl later learned that Ries had survived until the hunger marches shortly before liberation, when he was shot.
Neumeyer’s intellect
This drawing of an inmate by Leo Haas is the initial sketch for the picture I inserted in my previous post. It could well be Hans Neumeyer: his son Raimund (aka Raymond Newland) was sure it was him. It certainly seems to be a person who ‘met his fate with acceptance, even with humour’ as Mandl described him.
Hans Neumeyer gave the impression of a sharp wit and intelligence, and was a very good listener, asking questions that were short and to the point. Gradually Mandl understood that behind his smiling tolerance was a great mental toughness – both were complementary elements in a harmonious personality.
Mandl reflected that while camp life, with its many trials of hunger, terrible accommodation and hard, unfamiliar work, was difficult for himself as a young and healthy person, it must have been even harder for an older and weaker man – but Hans Neumeyer met his fate with acceptance and sometimes even humour. Mandl sometimes glimpsed the strain on his face when he saw his teacher trying to read in crowded conditions before he registered his pupil’s arrival – but then he would always smile, put down his braille book and give him his delicate, sensitive hand.
The camp had a huge library – part of its role as a ‘show camp’ to display to the likes of the Red Cross – and Neumeyer’s braille reading included higher mathematics and Aristotle in the original. Sometimes Mandl visited just to talk: Neumeyer was very well informed about the political as well as the cultural events in the ghetto: plays, concerts, talks and reading.
Once Mandl saw Neumeyer signing a document, and thought that as his handwriting was so childish he must have become blind at a very young age. Towards the end of 1943 Neumeyer became sick with TB and was moved to a small TB section. Mandl visited him in his bed from where he encouraged all his visitors to be strong:
Dear Herr Mandl, the seasons will come again and we shall forever be part of the seasons, but here in Theresienstadt this isn’t happening.
One of the last photos known of Hans Neumeyer: his identity paper during the Nazi period.
Mandl last saw him in the block washroom, and was shocked at his expression of utter dejection and some sort of strange wild premonition. In May 1944 he heard of his death, and enquired about the day of the funeral. It was a sunny day: three of Neumeyer’s pupils were among those who saw his crudely made coffin placed among the others on a truck and followed it to the barrier on the edge of the camp, which was as far as they were allowed to go. The barrier came down: ‘that was the way our dead left us’.
I am grateful to Hans Holzhaider for this material from his article on Thomas Mandl in the Süd Deutsche Zeitung.
A public prosecutor recalls his friend Martin Ephraim and Hans Neumeyer while incarcerated in Theresienstadt camp in 1944. This is a hitherto unpublished report (translated by Phil Goddard) by Dr Hans Walter Hirschberg, a Berlin judge, inmate of Theresienstadt concentration camp from February 1944 to May 1945. He was a friend of Martin Ephraim, my great-grandfather.
Theresienstadt was in many ways a sham set up by the Nazis, partly to impress the Red Cross: many arriving Jews believed they were coming to some sort of Jewish retirement home, and handed all their money over for the privilege, with the option of having a room with a view over the park, or whatever. Some brought their evening dress. Only when they arrived did it become apparent that this was far from the case.
Yet Hirschberg’s report hints that some aspects were not so terrible at certain times: a view that seems hard to swallow now when it was seemingly hell on earth in so many respects. Hans Walter Hirschberg arrived at Theresienstadt on transport number I/107, which left Berlin on 10 February 1944. He played an active in Protestant church life in the camp and painted an altarpiece used by Protestants and Catholics. In 1945 he wrote an unpublished eight-page manuscript Christen im Ghetto (Christ in the Ghetto), explaining the close relations between Protestants and Catholics in Theresienstadt. “Every tenth prisoner was Christian. There were clearly no differences between Lutherans, Calvinists and Bohemian-Moravian Brethren. But also between Protestants and Catholics, fraternal unity was the rule. From the very first, every sect had made it a point to invite the others to their lecture evenings.”
Hirschberg begins:
I arrived in Theresienstadt on 11 February 1944 and of course went to find Martin Ephraim straight away. He had declined a great deal mentally since coming to Theresienstadt a few weeks previously, and had lost much of his freshness and initiative. This is the only explanation I can see for the fact it was not until several weeks later that he mentioned, almost in passing, that Hans Neumeyer was also in Theresienstadt.
Martin Ephraim in the late 1930s
Shortly before Martin’s birthday on 23 March (he was so weak that he no longer went outside), I went to see Hans in the engineers’ barracks, part of which had been fitted out as a hospital for lung diseases. I found him to be typical of patients with serious lung problems. I introduced myself, and he was delighted to meet someone who showed such great sympathy for him; the only other person apart from me was Mr Weiner, from Munich. Hans wrote a few very warm words to Martin, which I handed over to him on his birthday, much to his pleasure.
Martin died on 4 April. I believe he was very depressed, though I think there is little point in enquiring about the cause of death when the patient is 84 years old.
Hans Neumeyer’s final demise
Although not an extermination camp as such, Theresienstadt was a point from where prisoners were regularly transported to Auschwitz and the gas chambers. In Theresienstadt, conditions were grossly overcrowded, and disease was rife. However, despite his blindness my grandfather Hans Neumeyer survived an extraordinarily long time there. He arrived on transport II/76 on 4 June 1942, on a transport bearing sick and disabled people, and lived until 19 May 1944, giving music lessons in exchange for food. He was known to his pupils as ‘The Professor’. Indeed music positively thrived here: there were regular concerts and an extraordinary range of talented musicians. Nearly all of them perished.
Hans Neumeyer
Hirschberg continues:
From then onwards, I often visited Hans. Although I have spent time with many tuberculosis patients, I did not suspect that he was so close to the end of his earthly life. However, he was becoming increasingly weak. The first few times we talked about music, but this soon became too much of an exertion, for him. He was sharing a room with about six men, and sometimes we all engaged in political discussions, but these made him irritable and often resulted in voices being raised. However, as far as I am aware, Hans did not suffer a great deal: he did not have the convulsive coughing and shortness of breath that are the usual symptoms of the final stage of tuberculosis, and this made me rather too optimistic about his overall condition.
Inmates in Theresienstadt: a drawing by Leo Haas. I showed an earlier sketch for this drawing to my uncle, Raymond Newland (Raimund Neumeyer, son of Hans) who was certain that the man in dark glasses in the foreground is a depiction of the blind Hans Neumeyer himself. Hans survived two years in the camp, giving music lessons in exchange for food. The caption in the museum in Thereisenstadt describes the sketch ‘Those affected with a disease’, so it confirms that the scene is in a sick bay.
There were two women who went and read to Hans at my request, but they told me that he kept falling asleep, and with hindsight there was not much point in making these efforts at this late stage.
When I visited him one day in May, I found Mr Weiner very concerned about him, and he had deteriorated so much that I withdrew straight away. I believe he died on the following day. Unfortunately, Mr Weiner did not know where to find me, so he did not manage to tell me about the cremation in time.
In Theresienstadt, cremations were required to take place within 24 hours of death, so when I came to see Hans on the afternoon of that day, the bed was empty and the funeral had taken place a few hours beforehand. There is very little else I can say.
I do not know how far Hans’ lung disease was a result of Theresienstadt or whether he was a direct victim of persecution. The healthcare was well organised, at least at the time when I arrived, when 10 per cent of all the inmates were employed in this area. The people with lung diseases were kept in beds with white sheets, and the “ward”, with its matron’s inspections and visiting times, was little different from an ordinary sanatorium.
Like many people, you may have been given the impression by propaganda, press coverage etc. that Theresienstadt was a hell, but that was not true of the time I spent there. It was intended as a model camp because foreign committees quite often visited it. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance put on for their benefit, but in fact this was not really necessary.
The worst thing about Theresienstadt was the mental aspect: the fact that we had been deprived of our freedom and there was a sword of Damocles hanging over us because we did not know what they were planning to do with us. We heard afterwards that they were planning to gas us all in April 1945. It was said at the camp commandant’s trial that he had made every effort to sabotage the gassing, but he was executed because he was accused of being responsible for the atrocities that took place in the small fortress 500 metres from Theresienstadt.
“Paradise on earth; everything is relative”
This scrap of paper bears Martin Ephraim’s handwriting: he quotes Martin Luther: “If the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today”. My mother told me that the blue writing below is by Dr Hirschberg: “This helped in Auschwitz, 1945.” The records show Hirschberg as a survivor at Theresienstadt, so I presume he went to Auschwitz in his role of public prosecutor.
Hirschberg returned soon after the war in the role of public prosecutor. I am not clear to whom he is addressing this, but the reference to Franz Kaufmann is interesting. This would appear to be the man who was responsible for underground activity in Berlin in assisting many Jews to escape the Nazis by providing them with false documents. Kaufmann was taken to Sachsenhausen in February 1944 and shot:
Today I met a former inmate of the camp who came to the east in the autumn of 1944 and was one of the few people to be saved. He said that in the eastern camps, Theresienstadt was regarded as a paradise on earth. Everything is relative.
I was often with your cousin Franz Kaufmann, latterly in the Jewish prison in Berlin where I spent my last ten days before being deported to Theresienstadt, and where he was held for interrogation. A few days after I arrived, he was taken off in chains and executed. He should be honoured as a martyr. We met in his apartment in 1940.
I have not experienced any anti-Semitism during my six-month stay. Most of the men look emaciated, though the women tend to be better off. We are also fact in winter and there is an unprecedented shortage of heating fuel. My salvation is my job as a public prosecutor working with young people, which gives me great pleasure, stops me from thinking too much, and takes my mind off the fact that my stomach is rumbling.
A note from Alois Weiner
Hirschberg mentions Alois Weiner in his report above. Weiner was from Moosburg in Bavaria, and survived Theresienstadt, returning to his home town after liberation in 1945, where he took part in the democratic reconstruction of municipality and became deputy mayor. Before the war he ran a textile store and was forced by the Nazis to divorce his Aryan wife. Among my mother’s papers I found an account written in German by Weiner on 25 July 1946, addressed to Herr Gustav Guldenstein, of the Academy of Music in Basle, and a colleague of Hans Neumeyer. He describes Hans’ demise in Theresienstadt:
For Hans Neumeyer things were tough here because of his blindness and camp life was a heavy burden too. At times he had 3-5 students, The Czech students who took lessons in composition from him had continued to support him with food. But one day his lung trouble erupted and he was taken into the hospital and unfortunately had to breathe the air in the room. His final decline was rapid and he knew he was at an end. He died on May 18, 1944. As was the custom in Theresienstadt all that was left of him was taken to the cremation chamber. He was cremated on May 21.
The Ephraims and the Neumeyers 