Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joseph Fath was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and immigrated to the United States in October 1938. It was his good fortune to escape what was to come and to resume a normal life in his newly adopted homeland, the United States. After receiving his education in chemistry, he spent a fifty year career rising to become a respected senior member of his industry. Now retired, he pursues writing and painting. He and his wife live in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Contents

Preface............................................................ixAcknowledgments....................................................xiii1 A Tearful Departure.............................................12 Reflections on a Marriage.......................................63 A Decade of Descent.............................................164 Deception and Betrayal..........................................295 An Unanticipated Opportunity....................................346 Coffee..........................................................627 Eviction........................................................768 A New Face......................................................979 Dinner and an Encore............................................10910 The Darkness of War-the Feast of Lights.........................11911 A Letter from the East..........................................13012 The New Year 1940...............................................13713 Victory in Poland...............................................14114 Another Cup of Coffee...........................................14415 Doubts, Further Deception, and Diversion........................14716 A Different Night-the Seder of the Remnants.....................17017 1940-the War Nearly Over?.......................................18918 More Persecution................................................19419 The Eastern Front Ignites.......................................20020 The Yellow Star-the Ultimate Deception..........................20821 The End of an Imagined Dynasty..................................22222 1942-the Other Shoe Drops.......................................23123 Goodbye, My Husband.............................................25024 Preparing to Leave..............................................25525 Leaving the Sanctuary...........................................26026 Die Anstaendigen (The Decent Ones)..............................26927 The Witnesses...................................................27928 Final Blows-an Ill-timed Encounter..............................28729 Why?............................................................30230 Verschollen (Vanished)..........................................309

Chapter One

March 10, 1939: a damp and intense cold of winter's end relentlessly penetrated all who needed to be outside their heated homes. Carola Rossmann and her daughter Trudi stepped off the trolley car at the Hauptbahnhof, the main railroad station of the city, rushing inside quickly to avoid the chill that gripped those in the plaza in front of the building. They had each been lost in the silence of pain of their last hour together. All they seemed to be able to express had been said to each other during the beginning of their ride to the station. The haunting echo of love from the two remaining members of the Seidenberger family they had left behind an hour earlier in the dilapidated apartment on the Unterlindau reverberated steadily inside each of them. Once inside the station's track area, they embraced tearfully and held on to each other with the force of unconditional love between mother and daughter that has no equal among any other relationships. As the tears flowed freely down their cheeks, the finality of their separation finally sank in. The hands on the large clock facing the tracks in the departure hall read 21:40, twenty minutes before the train would leave for Brussels, Belgium. There was only the drone of remote people noises, the calls of train dispatchers announcing imminent departures, and the hissing of steam from the cylinders of impatient coal-fired engines waiting to push their passenger trains backward out of the station.

Carola mused to herself how Trudi was leaving her family now, having, in turn, been left behind not long ago by her new husband, David Stern. They had quietly been married some weeks earlier in a brief ceremony at the town hall. It had been a civil ceremony because rabbis of his Orthodox Frankfurt congregation were no longer legally entitled to officiate at religious weddings. Therefore, the newlyweds were anxiously awaiting the religious ceremony that was to be held at the synagogue David joined in Brussels upon his arrival. He had left quickly, having had his exit permits to Belgium ready two weeks before the wedding in order to reestablish himself in the jewelry business with the help of supportive friends.

Trudi and David each explained to Carola that their Brussels move was part of a plan of escape devised by his friends of the erstwhile Friedberger Anlage congregation, organized in the manner of an underground railroad. As each new arrival in Belgium had quickly been employed by one of the previous arrivals, one of them then gave a personal guarantee of support by demonstrating to the authorities that he or she would not be a burden to the state in return for receiving Belgian immigration papers. Both Trudi and David impressed Carola with the fact that in this way strong ties formed between old and new friends at the Brussels Jewish community. In turn, people were often given the opportunity to bring additional members of their own families into the country. They regarded the Belgian residence as a temporary respite from which they could consider further emigration moves to England, Palestine, or North or South America.

This mutual, informal aid society formed the basis of the strongest of bonds which were to last the entire lives of the Belgian migrs as the reciprocal, often life-saving favors could never be fully repaid. The plan was also the basis of Trudi's promise to her mother to extricate her as quickly as possible from the constantly tightening noose forming around the remaining Jewish community in Frankfurt as their numbers shrank and their collective financial resources for self-help began to be taken away by the SS authorities at an ever accelerating rate.

"Mutti, don't cry," she said through her own tears. "It won't be long before David and I will send for you-just as soon as the paperwork is complete and we have found a small apartment in Brussels adequate for the three of us."

As they approached the gate, Carola and her daughter Trudi separated quietly. The young woman reached into her pocketbook to pull out and present her exit papers to the indifferent gatekeeper at track number fourteen near the center of the twenty-four-track departure lineup. She continued to look back at her mother as she quickly marched toward an open compartment door in the middle of the ten-car train. As she mounted the steps to a nearly empty compartment, she turned for one last time to wave to her mother, blowing her a kiss of departure that struck with such an emotional force of consolation that it dried Carola's cheeks and made her wave back with a wan smile and a look of contained courage. The doors finally closed as the conductors gave their last boarding shouts, orders, and other incomprehensible instructions and stepped on the sideboards at the end of the cars to disappear into the train's innards at the last second. The black, sooty engine came alive at last as its pistons, connected by a strong, convoluted system of rods and pinions, began to move its large load out of the station. The cold air of winter condensed and recondensed the steam emanating from seemingly everywhere, and the train disappeared quickly out from under the glass roof, which had been smudged with soot and other accumulated dirt during the many...