Escaping Hitler: A Jewish Haven in Chile

ESCAPING HITLER

JUDAIC STUDIES SERIES

ESCAPING HITLER

A Jewish Haven in Chile

EVA GOLDSCHMIDT WYMAN

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2013 The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Minion Pro

Cover illustration courtesy of Megan Galaviz

Cover design: Todd Lape/Lape Designs

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldschmidt Wyman, Eva.

[Huyendo del infierno nazi. English]

Escaping Hitler : a Jewish haven in Chile / Eva Goldschmidt Wyman.

pages ; cm — (Judaic studies series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8173-1800-0 (trade cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8678-8 (e book) 1. Jews, German—Chile—History—20th century. 2. Jewish refugees—Chile—History—20th century. 3. Jewish refugees—Chile—Biography. 4. Jews—Persecutions—Germany—History—20th century. 5. Goldschmidt Wyman, Eva. 6. Chile—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. 7. Chile—Ethnic relations. I. Title.

F3285.J4G65 2013

305.800983—dc23

2013005900

In memory of my parents and grandparents and all who suffered under the Nazi Regime

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. The Germany We Left

2. Kristallnacht Ignites a Desperation to Flee

3. The Ethnic Germans in Chile

4. Crossing Dangerous Seas: The Last Trip of the Copiapó

5. Chile's Political and Economic Systems under Stress: A Naci Party and the Jewish Immigration

6. No Visas Signs on Embassy Doors: The German Jewish Emigration to Chile

7. A Second Emigration: From Chile to Israel

8. Chilean Responses to the German Jewish Immigration

9. German Jewish Immigrants Tell Their Stories

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

My motivation for writing this book is to thank Chile for saving my life, those of my family members, and the lives of so many more. At the same time, I wish to tell about my family's journey and those of other families from Nazi Germany to Chile, a country that offered so many of us a haven and the possibility of starting our lives anew. Emigration has always existed and will continue to exist far into the future. Each catastrophe will create new waves of people looking for a haven.

There are so many who helped me bring this book to light. First of all I want to thank my parents for getting me out of the Nazi inferno and for keeping diaries of that terrible time. Those were the first accounts I read about Nazi Germany. And the more I read, the more I wanted to know. Although only a small child when I arrived in Chile, I feel part of the Jewish emigration to this South American country and I am deeply thankful to President Aguirre Cerda, who opened the doors to us, and to the Chilean people in the 1930s who welcomed us into their midst, where el asilo contra la opresión (a haven against oppression) was and is part of the chorus of their national anthem.

The book that impressed me most when I started reading about the Nazis was Víctor Farías's Los Nazis en Chile, mentioned here frequently. His research is most impressive and what I learned about the Nazis in Chile overwhelmed me.

I thank all my interviewees, who made this book so much more interesting with their incredible stories. Those whom I visited in their homes in Chile gave me their time, their tea, and homemade pastries (a Chilean custom). Those from Israel and one special person who had moved on to Australia told me their remembrances by e-mail. My aunt, Lisa Goldschmidt Hirsch, gave me the names of many of her friends and acquaintances in Chile to interview, and some of the interviewees in Santiago gave me their friends' names. It took me several winter visits to Chile to interview them and I loved doing it.

A big thank-you to Mark Wyman, who helped me with the manuscript in every way possible.

Also a big thank-you to my editor, Joseph Powell, who always seemed so enthusiastic, encouraging, and interested and was so helpful in getting my manuscript published. Without his interest this book would not have come out at this time, or maybe it would never have been published at all.

Thanks to my friend Magdalena Fuentes, who helped me with research at the Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago, Chile; to Sra. Ximena Cruzat, director of the Biblioteca Nacional; and Sra. Antonieta Palma, head of the Department of Restoration and Conservation, for giving us permission to look at the Jewish newspaper Mundo Judío, although it was then in the process of being restored.

Thanks to Sra. Marcela Cavada Ramírez, coordinator of Chile's National Archives; to Brigitte Altmann, who interviewed some of the immigrants even before I started with my project; and to Frau Elsbeth Appelbaum, from my mother's hometown of Burgsteinfurt, who sent me newspaper clipping after newspaper clipping with information or stories about the Jews who had lived there.

Thanks also to Steinfurt historian Ingeborg Hötting, whom I met on my visit to the town, for sending book excerpts with information on the Jews in Burgsteinfurt during the Nazi Regime; to Caroline Waddell, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for her help with illustrations; to Ellen Goetz Kaufmann for her assistance in locating the interviewees from Chile to get permission to use their stories; to my brother Mario Goldschmidt, who assisted me with getting illustrations from Germany; and to Dan Kriel in Israel for suggesting I should include the chapter on the immigration of young Jews from Chile to Israel. My heartfelt thanks to each of them.

1

The Germany We Left

We received my grandparents' last letter from Burgsteinfurt, Germany, on November 9,1941.¹ They were then sixty and sixty-five years old. My mother and I had arrived in Chile on November 13, 1939, fleeing the Nazi inferno. The Second World War had already started.

We never heard from my grandparents again. At the end of the war we learned through German government records that they had been killed in Riga, Latvia.²

Now we know, according to Burgsteinfurt historian Ingeborg Hötting, that they and my grandaunt and granduncle were among a group of eighteen Jews who were hauled from their homes on December 10, 1941, and taken to nearby Münster. There, along with hundreds of Jews from the entire region, they were locked inside a once-famous restaurant, the Gertrudenhoff.³ They remained there until the train arrived that was to carry them from Münster to Bielefeld, and finally to the Riga ghetto in Latvia. Another group of seven Jews left Burgsteinfurt on January 27, 1942, and went to Riga via Dortmund. Not a single member of this group survived the war. A third group was transported to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia on July 13, 1942. This latter group included my mother's schoolteacher and Jewish community cantor, Hermann Emanuel. According to German historian Willi Feld, only three Jews from this group survived.⁴ A total of 1,350 citizens from the Westfallen district alone lost their lives.

There were some ethnic Germans who tried to help the Jews in the Münsterland before their departure. Gerda Dubovsky tells of her uncle Ludwig Kaufmann, from Burgsteinfurt, who was visited by a former client, an important SS man, who saw Kaufmann just before his transport to Riga and offered to take him across the border into Holland that same night. A colleague wanted to hide him and his wife, but Kaufmann did not accept their help, refusing to put these people in danger. Another Jew, Ellen Löwenstein, from Oelde, recounts an incident occurring on the last day before deportation when a completely unknown woman brought her a package of butter, cheese, and sausage and disappeared before she could thank her. Before Jews were deported, the Gestapo would take their money, valuables, and house keys and give them a receipt.⁵

Siegfried Weinberg, one of the survivors from the first transport to Riga, recalls that on December 12, 1941, Jews were moved to the freight train station starting at eleven o'clock at night. About thirty-five to forty people were packed into small buses with their handbags. According to Ingeborg Hötting, on the morning of December 13, 1941, during one of the coldest winters on record, 1,006 Jews boarded the train, 400 of them from the Münster/Westfallen region. They were crammed into the third class area of the train—eight to ten in each locked compartment—and on December 13 at ten o'clock in the morning, the train started to move.⁶ They remained on board for three days without any heat or food.

Jeanette Wolff, who lived in Dortmund—where the Jews were waiting to be deported—told about them being held in the stock exchange building and sleeping on the bare floor for four nights before they were loaded on dirty, unheated wagons with toilets that were full of a half meter of frozen excrement. The unusually cold winter made the trip even more unbearable. Wolff describes the train trip: The terrible cold, and on top of it to have to sit day and night almost motionless brought about terrible frostbites.⁷

After three days of traveling with insufficient drinking water, those who arrived late in the evening at the Riga station had to sit one more night in the unheated wagons. The next morning when the SS beat the Jews to make them get off, they could hardly move because of their stiff limbs. They had difficulty wearing their shoes due to their swollen feet. But the beatings started immediately, and those men who had a cigar in their mouth quickly had it knocked out, and the same happened with their hats. That was their welcome! The Jews had to march seven kilometers carrying their hand luggage to the ghetto. Those who were too old, too sick, or too young were taken on sleds and never seen again.

All the Jews' heavier luggage was to be sent to the ghetto, but many of them preferred to carry it themselves. After a while most just left their bags on the street; they had become too heavy.⁸

When they arrived at the ghetto, they were shocked by the rundown wooden housing. But even worse was the chaotic, untidy heap of furniture and clothing. The food on the table was all frozen, having probably been left by the previous dwellers, who were made to leave in a hurry. They stood there flabbergasted, then swept up the dirt and threw the clothes outside, thinking that their luggage would be arriving. It never did. They also realized that they would have to live in close quarters with complete strangers. Sixteen lucky people who knew each other got to have two rooms and a kitchen. How they were envied by the others!⁹

In the ghetto, the Germans handed out food—soup and bread—only once a day, at night, and the hard-working men couldn't live on that amount of food, so they died earlier than the women. One person wrote later that they wouldn't have been able to bear it for four years; they only survived because in the first two they owned things they could exchange for food, especially those who worked outside the ghetto. They also found objects the Latvians had hidden before they were killed, and the German Jews exchanged these for edibles. This was not allowed, and if caught they were punished, and some were shot. In all survival reports, hunger played a central role. Those who didn't have enough to eat got sick and died. The Latvian Jews who had been in the ghetto before had hidden food for the winter. As the German Jews realized this, they looked for it everywhere. Somebody found a bathtub full of potatoes.¹⁰

Herta Salamon told about the time that a group of them was working near a ship, and a man came out to feed the pigs. He had two pails in his hands and there were two entire loaves of bread swimming in the liquid. One of the women ran to get them out and shared them with the others, exclaiming: This was better than a wedding cake. In another story, Ludwig Kaufmann from Burgsteinfurt, mentioned earlier, found jewels that had been hidden by the previous occupants and gave every one of his friends some so they could exchange them for edibles, thus enabling them to survive.¹¹

The German Jews had a big misunderstanding about working in the East: they thought that they were needed in the war industry, which was partly true, but only as long as the SS considered them useful. If one was incapacitated to work or became sick, he had to count on being killed. To exterminate through work and hunger was the main principle for all concentration camps. Five hundred able-bodied men who came with the transport from Münster/Bielefeld and Hannover, among them Siegfried Weinberg, found this out when they were instructed to build the Salaspils concentration camp near Riga. What they saw in December 1941 after a seven-kilometer march were two barracks without a roof, windows, or doors. Even when they were finished it was impossible to stay there without a coat and gloves; icicles hung from the ceiling. Because of this, the work force quickly became smaller through epidemics and sickness. A sixteen-year-old, Karl-Heinz goldberg, and Siegfried Heinbach died quickly from starvation, exhaustion, and cold. Fifty-three thousand people lost their lives at Salaspils, the largest death camp in the Baltic region.¹²

The men would walk through the camp looking like corpses, hardly able to carry themselves, but they also had to transport beams and boards with no opportunity to rest. If someone dared to stop for a few minutes, he would be beaten. The young men who were sent back to the ghetto after working the winter in the camp were completely worn out. One of the wives didn't recognize her husband when he came back after a few months; he had always been so tall and good looking, and now he seemed just a little man, she said.¹³

The women who worked inside—cleaning, sewing uniforms, or doing kitchen chores—were lucky because they received a warm lunch and didn't have to freeze outdoors. Those who worked in the open didn't get anything warm to eat and suffered from extreme cold, but they were able to exchange clothes for food from Latvians who lived outside the ghetto or camp. The SS didn't take into account the physical condition of the women, some of whom had to do the same hard work as men. The winter of 1941–42 was so cold that a non-Jewish woman from Münster who was working in Latvia wrote home asking for a thermometer that began at forty degrees below.¹⁴

One day, a ray of hope entered our gloomy being when an electrical company asked for twenty-five women: My mother and I were among them . . . I worked with big drill machines, I liked it . . . this work was almost interesting . . . besides we were inside and not in the rain and cold, commented one woman.¹⁵

Death in camps in the East happened for different reasons: sickness, lack of food, and exhaustion, as well as beatings, shootings, hangings, and gassing. Siegfried Weinberg describes the first days in the Riga ghetto: On December 17 was the first day of work and on December 18 there already were some deaths. That night at nine o'clock there was a raid, SS men came into the houses, searched and beat those who didn't answer questions fast enough. In the house where he lived, two men were shot. Almost daily, Weinberg said, there were shootings for unimportant reasons. Hangings were carried out where it was mandatory for everyone to be present, and the prisoners witnessing these were deeply impressed. The first hanged, I will never forget it, was a baker from Hannover, killed for a trifle.

Ghetto commander Krause would sometimes personally control those coming back from work. What he did with Jews caught in the act of doing anything that wasn't allowed depended entirely on his mood. He would occasionally shoot them at the old cemetery; at other times he just let them go. A woman was killed because she had smuggled some socks from a work detail. When Krause appeared in the ghetto, the streets would quickly empty.

After the war, Ernst Steinweg told a rabbi in Argentina about the murder actions when the ghetto in Riga was dissolved in November of 1943: The worst day was November 2, 1943, when most of our children, the sick, and the old had been transported. When we arrived from work that day, the ghetto was empty. There was crying and calling, moaning and complaining from those who stayed behind.¹⁶

Getting sick in the ghetto meant being unable to work, and that was a death verdict. There was a hospital, but the medicine that the doctors had brought with them did not last for long. Soon there was nothing left.¹⁷

Before my grandparents and other Jews were taken by the Nazis, representatives of the government had told them they would spend some time at a work camp where they would be given enough food and would remain together. Before the deportation started, the Nazis had seized my grandparents' home (which was a common practice at that time with Jewish citizens), and they had to live crammed together with other Jewish families in a house provided by the Nazis. It had no windows, except in the kitchen.

In Burgsteinfurt there were three of these houses—called Judenhäuser—where the thirty-one Jews who had not fled were made to live before they were taken to Riga or Theresienstadt.¹⁸ Author Marion Kaplan describes these houses, which existed everywhere in Germany, in one of her books. They were very old and dilapidated, not heated properly, and in many cases infested. The Jews had to share a room with strangers. The Gestapo would come to check on them for forbidden edibles or other items. They would harass, rob, and beat them. The Jews feared their visits and were always hungry, but they formed a community and helped each other.¹⁹

In a letter on August 31, 1941, my grandparents wrote that they were already living in their new home, a Judenhaus. They communicated this in a way that would not worry us or attract the attention of the German authorities, who could censor their letters and watched for anything critical of the government: We already feel quite well in our new home. Of all our things, we only had to sell the stove, because here we have central heating . . . Soon the Autumn Holidays will be here [they were referring to the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement] and I am sending you affectionate greetings . . . I pray that very soon we can all be together again, all our family. Wishing you a cordial ‘Le Shanah Tovah,’ your father. My grandmother added: We have gotten used to this place quite well. We have a kitchen, bedroom . . . we have a skylight, so I don't need to hang curtains. In the kitchen there are two big windows. We are living here with three other families . . . hoping to get news from you soon. Affectionate greetings and kisses, mother.

On October 20, in another letter, they wrote: Our health is fine . . . I need to inform you of a new development, but don't be scared. There is the possibility that soon we will be moving again, we don't know yet where. If you don't receive a letter from us, don't worry. We will let you know of our new address as soon as possible. I insist that you not worry in the least and like all of us accept this fact calmly. Everything will happen as destiny wants it, and God permitting, we will all see each other again . . . Until this moment we have not decided on anything. It seemed that my mother and uncle in Chile were trying to get a visa for my granduncle and grandaunt to join them. My grandparents' last letter, dated November 9, 1941, says:

My dear ones, we received your telegram last Friday morning and hope that everything will be arranged fast, otherwise it will be in vain. We will inform you telegraphically of uncle Otto's and aunt Selma's birth dates,²⁰ although from next Saturday on, we won't be able to send anything abroad. You can find out from Fritz, but aunt Selma will also communicate with you. We haven't yet decided about our change of address, but the decision might come any moment . . . Yesterday we received warm blankets . . . They asked us what other warm clothes we needed for the change of address . . . because the place where we are moving, will be very cold . . . Now I want to end, hoping that you, dear Edith will not get emotional, will not worry too much. Best wishes, your father.

Selma and Otto sent their dates of birth and added: I suppose that you have already asked for those facts to Pitrufquén.²¹

They weren't able to make it out of Germany. The mayor of Burgsteinfurt, Dr. Schumann, wrote to the head of the administrative district of Steinfurt on June 26, 1940, that Otto Hirsch had his visa, but the emigration was prevented because of the suspension of ships going through Italy. At the end he adds, I believe he is going in the next transport—apparently to the concentration camp. His business had been taken away from him, as happened with other Jews, in November 1938.²²

Italy went to war in June 1940. In October 1941 the German government banned emigration, although some people were still able to leave. They wanted the Jews out but by 1941 gave them no possibility of leaving.²³ My granduncle, his wife, and my grandparents were deported December 10, 1941. That day the Nazis picked them up from one of the Judenhäuser and took them to Münster, from where they were transported to Riga.

The third group of seven Jews from Burgsteinfurt went to Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. They were first taken to Münster by bus or truck.²⁴ In August of 1942, 13,469 Jews from the whole region went in thirty-six transports and arrived at the camp. This was the largest number of new people to be pressed into the quarters. Because of the miserable sanitary conditions and the advanced age of the new arrivals, many died in a very short time. In September of 1942 there were 3,941 deaths. Many of the couples were separated, although there were cases where children stayed with their mothers and some large families lived together.²⁵

The train station was about two to three kilometers from the concentration camp, and the Jews had to carry their luggage in their hands or on their backs, sometimes also holding their children. If they were too slow, the soldiers would push them brutally with their rifles, screaming at them to hurry up.

Because many of the older people were close to fainting, having been deprived of food and water for days and being so terribly exhausted due to the long trip, they were transported by truck, but crowded in such a way that they had to travel standing, including the veterans of World War I, leaning on their crutches.

Arriving at the camp, everyone was ordered to undress and shower; men, women, and children, everyone together. Those who didn't obey were beaten. They showered in cold water in winter, without soap, without towels, without heating. Then they were thrown some old clothes, some too big and some too small. No stockings and no underwear. They never saw the garments or jewels they had brought with them. Those were sent back to Germany for the use of the ethnic Germans.

Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia had been a fort with three thousand civilians and between ten and thirteen thousand soldiers. Now there were between fifty-five thousand and sixty thousand Jews living there. Men and women were separated and each room held about forty people. Not even with the windows open was there sufficient air. They didn't have a single nail on which to hang clothes, or a shelf, chair, or table (though some were later able to get a nail or shelf). Many had to sleep on the bare floor, or two to three people shared a mattress placed there. Because it was impossible to stay clean, fleas, bedbugs, and other insects were a problem. At the end of each hallway were the toilets with three cubicles, never enough to serve fifty to one hundred people. A shower was allowed once every two months and laundry every three to four months. In winter it was so cold (without heating) that people would freeze to death, and in summer, those sleeping in the attic would suffocate with heat.

The Germans had announced that Theresienstadt would be a model camp, Hitler's Gift to the Jews. They called it not a concentration camp but a resort for older people, where they could rest—that is why they were advised to bring their best clothes and their jewels. They were also told that if they gave all their belongings to the government, they would be cared for until the end of their days. There was no other option than to accept. In Theresienstadt everything was taken away from them.

It was true that this was a different type of concentration camp. Many older people and children lived there; a large number of writers, musicians, actors, singers; Jews married to Aryans who had children in the Nazi army or whose non-Jewish spouses were important people who might complain if their husbands or wives were mistreated. Other residents included children of mixed parentage and Jews who had received medals for bravery in World War I. It was not a death camp, but from there people were sent east to be exterminated, for the place could not absorb all who kept coming.

However, in reality Theresienstadt was not the model camp the Nazis wanted people to believe it was. As indicated above, it was very crowded; rooms that had housed three or four people when it was a barrack now had sixty, two to a bunk, which were so close to each other that it was difficult to climb in or out of them. At night, when sleeping, in order to go to the bathroom they had to crawl on top of others. People were hungry all the time, unless they helped in the kitchen or had friends who worked there. They were served weak coffee in the mornings, a watery soup made of powder and a potato for lunch, a third of a