Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Y. Michal Bodemann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Out of the Ashes: The Vicissitudes of the New German Jewry and the editor of Jews, Germans, Memory: Reconstructions of Jewish Life in Germany.

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"These interviews are valuable and frank documents. The experiences of the Kalman family are representative of many Jewish families in the period 1945-2000. Y. Michal Bodemann's astute questions and obvious intimate acquaintance with the family bring out the problematic aspects of being Jewish in Germany today. He deals not only with questions of anti-Semitism but also with the secularization process of German Jews."--Jack Zipes, coeditor of "Unlikely History: The Changing German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1945-2000"

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A Jewish Family in Germany Today

Duke University Press

Chapter One

1950 Albert builds house with hotel in F. 1952 Albert and Eva marry in F. 1954 Berthold born in F. 1967 family moves from the hotel to a new house 1960s family arbitration panel set up 1970 Kalman firm at its peak: 81 stores 1975 Ignaz leaves Kalman firm 1975 Albert increasingly ill; first heart attack 1977-78 Berthold fully involved in Kalman firm 1978 Berthold completes his studies, diploma. 1978 Jurek leaves firm; Albert's family now sole owners 1983 Kalman firm in difficulties; Berthold arrested; house is searched 1984 Kalman firm in receivership 1985 Albert Kalman dies

No one would deny that in the Kalman family, Albert, the eldest of the four surviving siblings from Slawkusz, was the family's towering figure, "der Motor der Familie," the "family engine," as his son Berthold put it. Without him, there would never have been a Kalman Haushaltsgerate, and without him, the three brothers would never have come together in a single firm. Albert died in 1985, and all we can do to lend him voice is to try to reconstruct some aspects of his biography from how the rest of his family perceive him and his life's work, the Kalman firm. In the best position to do this next to his widow, Eva, is his eldest son, Berthold. Like virtually all the Kalman children, Berthold helped out in the firm as a youngster; however, he was the only one to work in the firm full time after completing his studies, and he was also the family member who attended to the firm until the bitter end. It is Berthold who provided the most detail about his father's life and family background. Where necessary, observations made by other family members will be added to Berthold's story. We met for the interview in an open air cafe in Munich's Schwabing district.

BERTHOLD: Let me try to pull this together somehow. My father was the eldest of eight children. He was a Zionist, and the way the Zionists were at the time, he was a follower of Jabotinski, he actually still knew him personally. About my grandparents, there are a couple of stories. The grandparents were Hasids, that was a very pious family, very pious. My father was member of Betar, and he knew all those things. My father was a bit of a revolutionary. In Betar, he was not that religious, but he had gone to a yeshiva, I believe he even wore peyes, it really was a strictly religious Jewish family. But as I said, my father was a bit of a revolutionary and he went to Zakopane in the Tatra mountains to go skiing. For a Jew at that time, before the war, that was exceptional, nobody was allowed to know that, he also ate treife there. He always told me, the best thing they had there was sauerkraut with smoked bacon. If someone had found out about that [laughs], I cannot imagine what a scandal this would have caused in his family. Also, his father sawed his skis in half twice. Because a Jew was not supposed to go to sports activities in Zakopane, to all these goyim and treife food and so on. That's how my father was at the time.

Eventually, my father's Zionist commitment brought about a conflict that had a decisive influence on his life. As I said, he was in Betar, and it got to the point, especially with all the preparations-he was madrich and so on-where he was selected, before the war, to go on aliyah, to Israel. And he kept telling his parents about that, he said, he was going to go to Israel. So the day arrived when he was to leave. And this is how Jewish life happens, Jewish fate: his mother started saying, if you leave us, you will kill us, and if you go, your mother will die. I am sure you know all those emotional assaults and blackmail. So he stayed home, and the result was that sometime thereafter, he ended up in a concentration camp.

EVA: He had an incredible love for his mother; he wanted to emigrate to Palestine, and thought of his mother so often and how he had to leave her. He was in Betar. And he went through everything, all the training, everything, and his mother-she must have been a very smart woman-she let him do it all. When it came to the point where he was supposed to leave for Palestine, in 1937 or 1938, she apparently said, and I can only quote what Albert told me, "If you do that, then I am going to throw myself out of the window." So he gave in and he did not leave. Later, when he ended up in the concentration camp, he said to himself, yes, yes, she did not allow me to go. And now I have landed here. For four and one-half years, my husband was in the concentration camp, he was one of the first they picked up. A concentration camp can change a person, a person's character.

BERTHOLD: My father was somehow involved in Jewish community affairs in Slawkusz, people wanted him to be elected to the so-called Judenrat in order for him to help compile the lists that would get other people picked up and sent onto the transports. At the same time, they promised that nothing would happen to him and his family. This my father did not do. He refused to compile the lists and so on, and so it happened that he was the first one in the area to be arrested and sent to the camp. My father said this was unusual because at the beginning they picked up only the very poorest and the social misfits, beggars and peddlers, a big group in Poland at the time.

But my father came from a well-to-do and respected family, they owned houses and a tobacco wholesale company, very respected and well-to-do people. Normally people from these groups were arrested and deported only much later. Despite all of that, he was one of the first to go, because of his refusal to enter the Judenrat. My father was therefore already in the concentration camp before 1940. What I don't know is when Jurek and my father's other siblings were picked up and when his parents got there, I don't know that, nor did he remember that.

EVA: We know little about my husband's time in the camps. Only in later years did he speak about how he was picked up. He did not want to talk about it. It was only when the children began to ask, around the time they were in school, he began to talk, very slowly and he did not like to talk about it. Only when he got together with some people, for example with the elder Schenfeld, the father, because with him he was in the camp. Then they started talking, "Do you remember when ..." and so on. But with me personally and on his own initiative he did not like to talk. With Schenfeld they even laughed at times. "Do you remember what I did then? And then, remember, you had ..., and I told you, No! and because you did that, I did not give you ..." It was a communication into the laughable. Laughing, yes, but later, when the children began to ask, he started talking, but then it got to be serious. With tears, too. I really almost could not understand what a human being could suffer there, how a person could bear that.

BERTHOLD: There are very few stories that my father told from the camp. He told a couple of stories about where he had to work, in some clay pits, in winter without shoes and in water and so on, about all this forced labor, and he also spoke about beatings. Once in a while, he also talked about people helping him, guards, peasants, outsiders who slipped him a piece of bread or hid some bread for him somewhere, so he talked about these things, too....