Young Lothar

An Underground Fugitive in Nazi Berlin

Larry Orbach, Vivien Orbach-Smith

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786721730
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

His promising education was aborted; his close-knit family splintered. When the Gestapo came for Orbach's mother on Christmas Eve 1942, they escaped with false papers; his mother found sanctuary with a family of Communists and Orbach - under the assumed identity of Gerhard Peters - entered Berlin's underworld of 'divers'. He scraped a living by hustling pool, cheating in poker and stealing - fighting, literally, to stay alive. Outwardly he became a cagey amoral street thug, inwardly he was a sensitive, romantic boy, devoted son and increasingly religious Jew, clinging to his humanity. In the end, he was betrayed and sent to Auschwitz, on the last transport, in 1944. This singular coming of age story of life in the Berlin underground during WWII is, in essence, a story of hope, even happiness, in the very heart of darkness.

1

Born in a Gathering Storm

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, I HAD FOUGHT VIGOROUSLY AGAINST BEING BORN. Could I have had a premonition that I was about to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time?

My mother had delivered four babies before me – my brothers Heinz and Manfred, and two who died shortly after birth – but never had she had such trouble. For eight hours she pushed, and for eight hours the top of my head was visible, yet I remained lodged stubbornly inside her.

“Hold on, Frau Orbach, this may be your best heifer yet!” crooned the diminutive Dr. Schicke who, according to our housekeeper Minna, source of much of my earliest family lore, was sweating as profusely as his patient. Dr. Schicke was the only obstetrician in our small, eastern German village of Falkenburg, and also its only veterinarian. On many occasions he raced from one delivery to another, from a calf to a baby and then to a pony, treating all mothers and offspring with equal gentleness and respect.

My father stood nearby, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped. He looked constantly at his pocket watch, Minna later recounted with some amusement, grousing that it was time to open the store, that someone had to go to work to pay for all these children. The truth was Papa loathed the atmosphere of suffering; for all his bluster, he was the weaker and more tenderhearted of my parents, and could not bear to see his wife so helpless.

From his worn leather bag, Dr. Schicke took a set of huge, tarnished tongs, the same instrument he used to extract uncooperative baby lambs. “This is the only alternative,” he whispered to my father, who stood frozen with fear. Panting and groaning, he pulled and squeezed and pulled with the forceps, prying me from my sanctuary into this world.

Alas, Dr. Schicke's ministrations also reshaped my head into a distinctly conical shape, a feature that proved permanent. For years to come my brothers and my schoolmates would call me Eierkopf, egghead. The nickname stung until my mother declared, and I leapt to believe, that the extrusion at the top of my head was in fact an extra piece of brain, a reserve of cunning and quick-wittedness that, as it turned out, would prove essential to my survival.

The date was May 22, 1924. Exactly eight days later, in the tradition of all the sons of Abraham, I was circumcised by an elderly mohel, nearsighted and trembling of hand, a specially trained rabbi who came to our town when summoned from the nearby capital of Stettin, for our own Jewish community was too small to afford a full-time circumciser. Afterwards he raised a goblet of sacramental wine, and declared my name before the community of which I was now a member: Eliezer ben Aaron Hacohen, Eliezer the son of my father Aaron, the same name as the son of the Biblical Aaron, and descended from that same lineage of High Priests of the Jewish faith. But exalted as my Hebrew name and its lineage was, it was used only in the synagogue at special times of year. I was, to myself and to one and all, Lothar Orbach. A German boy born of German parents who happened to be Jewish. And so as Lothar, I embarked upon a carefree, unremarkable childhood in the lush Pomeranian countryside.

As the owners of the town's general store, my parents had many customers and a wide circle of friends, most of whom were not Jewish. People, women especially, were instantly drawn to my father, who exuded a rakish charm, and who was as handsome as an actor with his lustrous mane of mahogany hair and heavy-lidded hazel eyes. My mother was not as good-looking as her spouse, and she walked with a pronounced limp because of a childhood accident, but her keen dark eyes bespoke such forthrightness and intelligence that she commanded respect and admiration. My parents were sociable people, and our comfortable home was regularly the scene of noisy song-fests and marathon card games.

My brothers and I were alternately spoiled and spanked by our adoring parents, who left us largely on our own while they worked long hours at the store. Schoolwork rarely interfered with playtime, for little value was placed on education or intellectual discourse by the simple farmers in this small village. In retrospect, it was a region rife with ignorance and superstition in which prejudice could easily take root.

My most vivid memory of my birthplace, ironically, is of the event that would trigger our family's departure. I was four years old, and my mother asked me to deliver a sandwich to my father at the local pub, a short walk from our store. Like so many of the other townsmen, he enjoyed spending an hour or two each day in the Wirthaus, Falkenburg's only pub and the site of every sort of gathering and celebration.

I found my father in his usual spot, drinking beer with his clique of friends, and holding forth as always on business or politics or local gossip. He also liked to brag a bit about his record in the German Army during World War I; as a Master Sergeant in the Medical Corps, he was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, for bravery after he caught and shot a knife-wielding French renegade in his barracks near Sedan.

I was sitting by my father's side when two bearded Orthodox Jews entered the pub, dressed in Hasidic garb – long black caftans, laced high boots, and large, fur-trimmed, black felt hats. Their clothing, though decidedly out of place, was finely cut and immaculate, for the two men were prosperous businessmen, well-known feed merchants who served all the local hamlets. While they did not socialize with their customers, they were highly regarded by the farming community because their prices, products, and general business dealings were considered fair.

A fellow named Wilhelm von Puttkammer reached across me to grab my father's arm. “Arnold, can you smell how all of a sudden it stinks in here?” he said in a loud voice. My father stared uncomprehendingly at Willi, who pressed on. “You mean to tell me you can't smell those two from over here?” he bellowed, holding his nose. “It reeks of garlic, it is terrible!”

Papa's face turned red and a vein in his neck began to pound. “You're right, Willi, I can smell it now,” he said. “You probably shit in your pants, you son of a bitch, that's what stinks!”

Willi looked at my father with narrowing eyes. “What do you mean? Don't you see those Jews over there, those parasites? They are the ones who create all the problems in the world, they make the German folk suffer! You had better understand it now, my friend, before it is too late!”

“Well I am one of those parasites,” said my father in an even tone. “And I will show you where it really smells, where you belong!” With those words, my father rose to his feet. He was a powerfully built man, and the elfin Willi was no match for him. I watched him pick up his stunned tablemate like a toy, carry him yowling into the pub's back room, and throw him through the open window onto a pile of fresh manure.

What was I, a young child, to make of all this? I was shaken by the menacing tones I heard around me, but it was thrilling to witness my own father transformed into a real-life “Superman” who tossed his adversaries out of windows. What I didn't understand was why my father had assaulted one of his own comrades in defense of them, the foreign-looking men in the funny clothing. The everyday rhythms of our family's life were more akin to those of a Willi von Puttkammer than to the bearded men who had fled the pub. It was clear that those men were aliens and outcasts. I viewed them that way myself, and did not understand how my father or I could be connected to them.

Papa took my hand, and we exited the pub. I sprinted ahead to the general store because I couldn't wait to tell Mama about his heroic display of brute force, an event far more exciting than the fumbling fights in which we youngsters routinely engaged. But Mama didn't seem excited at all. “You're all right, Arnold?” she asked quietly. He nodded and looked at Mama with a sorrowful, clouded expression I had never seen before, an expression I realized much later was fear.

Wilhelm von Puttkammer became the most outspoken Jew-hater in Falkenburg, and he and his cronies made life miserable for its few Jewish families. Years later, we would learn that he had been appointed one of the Gauleiters, or vice governors, of Pomerania, overseeing the mass deportations of Jewish citizens and seizing their property.

As brown shirts and Nazi uniforms became common in the village, many of the townspeople boycotted our store. Its front windows were smashed on several occasions, and we knew very well by whom, but we had no proof and no recourse. Papa stopped going to the Wirthaus, and few neighbors greeted us as usual. We children continued our rough and tumble play, but it was laced with a new antagonism.

Less than a year after my father's confrontation with Willi von Puttkammer, he and my mother sold their store and all its contents. They received only a small fraction of the business's worth, but it was better than going bankrupt, being further vandalized, or worse. With this modest nest egg, our parents announced, we would make a new start where there were more of our own kind, a cosmopolitan city populated by people of learning and culture, where diversity was better tolerated, and where bright youngsters like us would have greater opportunities.

And so, within weeks, the Orbach family boarded a train bound for Berlin. As the train snaked through the verdant countryside, the five of us sat silently, eating oranges my mother had packed for the trip. The serene landscape outside the window looked like a picture postcard; how beautiful and sedate was this homeland of ours, how incongruous with the ugliness that had led to our departure.

We moved in with my grandmother, Fanny, who was alone after the recent death of my grandfather. She lived in a spacious second-floor apartment on Greifswalder Strasse, a middle-class neighborhood in the eastern part of the city. There were four medium-sized buildings in our complex, with an inner courtyard that was an ideal place to run and play. My mother's mother was a dour woman who kept largely to herself. My parents always treated her with respect, as did we boys, but she did not seem interested in any kind of relationship with us. Papa put his experience as a merchant to good use, and landed a job as a salesman for a large textile manufacturer. Mama threw herself into her role as Hausfrau, a relatively new experience, for she had been co-owner and bookkeeper of the general store and, in the years before her marriage, the executive secretary to the president of a large corporation. Yet she was equally talented at cooking and baking, and quickly became known throughout the neighborhood for her delicately seasoned whitefish, savory lamb shanks with potatoes and green beans, and her moist, fragrant plumcake.

In September, like every other German child about to enter kindergarten, a picture was taken of me holding my enormous Zuckertuete, a funnel-shaped cardboard container stuffed at the bottom with paper and brimming at the top with colorfully wrapped candies. Learning came easily to me, and I relished every minute in the classroom. My teacher for the first three years was a middle-aged woman with the most gentle, soothing voice. I could hardly wait to see her each day. Clearly, school would be a place where I would thrive, even excel.

I got along well with the other boys, and had many friends. Of my class of twenty-four children, four of us were Jews. Coincidentally, three of the four, myself included, were the best students in the class and we were well liked since we readily gave our time to anyone who needed help with his schoolwork. After school, I would return to the apartment, quickly complete my homework, and then run back outside until after dark. Although we had few store-bought toys, boredom was unknown to us. When the weather was good, we played soccer for hours on end, breaking many windows and occasionally losing our ball to some enraged apartment dweller. Even in the pouring rain, there was fun to be had: my friends and I, drenched to the bone, would throw matchsticks into the gutter, assign each match the name of a famous race-car driver – mine was always the Italian champion Nuvolari – and cheer them on as they streamed downhill in the surging rainwater. The first match to reach the next street corner was the winner. I stayed indoors only when I was being punished.

Our large veranda, which held a table that could seat a dozen, was also the site of many birthday parties and holiday gatherings. Late into the night, we joined Mama and Papa and their friends as they ate and drank and serenaded passersby with Deutsche Lieder, the lively and often touching German folksongs. The Orbach home, as in Falkenburg, was once again a social hub. Only now, most of my parents' friends were Jewish.

Jewish, yes; but, like us, not “too” Jewish. My mother, while she believed in God and prayed to Him fervently each night, had received little religious training from her own parents. My father enjoyed Jewish ritual and liturgy, and took me to synagogue with some regularity. He particularly loved presiding over the Passover table each year and conducting the family's Seder. But deeply devout Jews, like the ones we and Willi von Puttkammer had seen in the pub in Falkenburg, remained alien to us. We were Germans first, and Jews second, and disdained anyone for whom religion superseded national identity. My father rose through the ranks to become president of the local chapter of the Reichsbund Juedischer Frontsoldaten, an elite Jewish veteran's organization. He never went out without wearing his veteran's insignia, a black, red, and gold ribbon, pinned to his lapel. Mama once showed me one of his letters from army training camp in 1916, just after they were married: “Kaiser Wilhelm has said that we must persist as long as the Fatherland is in peril,” he had written. “No German man shall be missing who is healthy and strong enough to defend his Fatherland!”

My brothers and I were members of the Bund Deutsch Juedisher Jugend, an umbrella organization for Jewish youth that included political groups, and scouting and sports clubs. We were proud to march behind its banner at the annual Jewish Sportfest held at the Grunewald Sportsplatz, a large Berlin stadium, where we competed in track and field, soccer, and other sports against other Jewish groups. Some of them were Zionists, with the left-wing ideology of Hashomer-Hatzair or the militantly right-wing Betar. We regularly got into fist-fights and shouting matches with those opponents because, to many of us, Zionism was a traitorous ideology; the Holy Land was an ancient artifact revered by those bearded rabbis and their narrow-minded flocks, old-fashioned types who were sadly ignorant of the blessings of German culture and civilization.

During those early years, our new life in Berlin was so happy and rewarding that my parents regularly congratulated themselves for their wisdom in fleeing Pomerania. They did not anticipate that, with the election of Adolf Hitler as chancellor, a murderous hatred would begin to poison Germany's elite as readily as it had consumed the simple farm folk we had left behind. In February 1933, barely a month after Hitler's election, Berlin's parliamentary building was set ablaze, and the Communists were blamed. The arsonist was said to be a Dutchman named Van der Lubbe, who was scapegoated in an absurd trial and executed amidst great fanfare, as a warning to all supposed enemies of the state. This episode launched the enactment of race laws by the new masters of Germany who sought protection for the good German folk from Hitler's so-called “undesirables,” the Jews and their Communist friends.

It so happened that our block was the unofficial border between the Christburger Strasse neighborhood, home of many of the Communist street gangs, and a large Nazi enclave in the Pasteurstrasse district. Street fights between ruffians on both sides became a common occurrence on Greifswalder Strasse, right outside our window. I once ran to assist my brother Heinz when he got caught in the middle of a melee. As he wildly swung his bicycle pump against the Communist punks, a group of young Nazis mistook him for one of their comrades, and helped him escape. One of his defenders called after him to be sure to attend the next Party meeting at the local headquarters.

At ten years old, I was immersed in my studies and sports and secure in my many friendships; the racist headlines and growing unrest in the adult world seemed distant and unreal until … until I was barred from reciting “Kaempfe, Blute!” at the commencement exercises. Even then, our Aryan classmates seemed to want to keep their Jewish friends as long as they could. It was only when their parents began punishing them for associating with us that they turned away, and then reluctantly at first.

Most of the boys and girls I knew ended up joining the Hitler Jugend, as membership became mandatory for all school students. Dressed in perfectly pressed uniforms with ribbons and badges, they marched in big parades far grander than those of my sports club. Some of my classmates were given the honor of carrying the flags and banners; a few even brandished drill weapons. I watched them go, these classmates and teammates and neighborhood friends of mine, withdrawing into their own circle and leaving me outside. I was captivated by the pageantry of the Hitler Jugend, jealous of the camaraderie, and would have joined in a minute. It never occurred to me that I would be an enemy against whom they were joining forces.

In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and the hostile atmosphere became official policy and now pervaded our school. We, the four eleven-year-old Jewish boys of the 228 Volksschule of Berlin, became second-class citizens, our long-standing friendships declared null and void. We were separated from the other pupils, and made to sit in a back corner of the room. The Aryan children were told not to fraternize with us unless absolutely necessary, which was a bitter blow for us as well as for those who had grown dependent on our tutorial services. But I was always an entrepreneur; instead of helping my classmates with their schoolwork for free, I now began selling my answers for ice cream and other treats that were increasingly hard to come by. My parents were clearly unhappy about our treatment at school, but they said nothing; it was the law and, after all, we were Germans, we obeyed.

Even though my grades were excellent, my early application to a topflight Berlin gymnasium was rejected. My three Jewish classmates and I then decided to apply for admission to the Jewish Middle School on the Grosse Hamburger Strasse, for the public school atmosphere was becoming unbearable. One of the boys was a mediocre student whom we had always helped through school, and he was terrified he might fail the entrance examination and be forced to return to the public school class as the only Jew. I promised him I would show him my answers during the test, despite the proctor's lecture about Germany's age-old “honor system.” I kept my promise.

I was proud to have helped a friend, but it was a disastrous decision for me – the proctor caught us cheating and ejected us both on the spot. I had blown my chance to enter the only Jewish high school in Berlin, and I was excluded by law from any other public high school. I finished my grammar school days in the back row of the classroom; I buried my head in my books and tried to hear only the voices of the poets, tuning out the taunts of my classmates, and the ominous, raging threats of Adolf Hitler.

In May of 1937, I had my Bar Mitzvah, a subdued celebration that was a far cry from the elaborate, catered affairs that had marked my brothers' comings of age. By then, it was forbidden to gather in a synagogue, so I chanted from the Torah and led a small congregation in the auditorium of the Jewish Orphanage of Berlin, founded in 1833 by a Baruch Auerbach. That Sabbath's reading from the Book of Numbers spoke of the special honor given to the High P...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the New Edition
• Original Preface
• Prologue
• 1. Born in a Gathering Storm
• 2. The Institute Orbach
• 3. We Are Going Under
• 4. Silent Night, Holy Night
• 5. A Very Busy Day
• 6. Learning the Angles
• 7. Houseguests
• 8. Stacking the Deck with Opa
• 9. Warmed by an Old Flame
• 10. From Street to Sanctuary
• 11. Hauling Coal, Lifting Cash
• 12. Vice Squad
• 13. A Pause for Passover
• 14. Learning to Swim
• 15. Betrayal
• 16. Vignettes of Hell
• 17. Picking Up the Pieces
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments