Wolfgang started school in 1933 at the state primary school on Sybelstrasse. When the family moved first to Bismarckstrasse 66 and then in 1935 to Fritschestrasse 55, both in Charlottenburg, he changed to the state primary school on Witzlebenstrasse. ‘There were seven Jewish children in my class out of twenty-eight pupils. Our class teacher was special. She did not favour us Jewish pupils but she felt a particular sympathy for us.’ The Jewish children had religious instruction twice a week. ‘We were exempt from the Christian class. And even at the state primary school there was a very good religion teacher, Miss Kaspari.’ The Christian fellow pupils were curious and asked questions about the Jewish religion. ‘I remember at Pesach – naturally I ate matzo, unleavened bread − and the children asked me what I was eating. I explained to them as well as I could its origins and the significance of this festival.’
There were very few Jews living in Fritschestrasse. Wolfgang made friends on the street with the neighbourhood children. ‘They came to our apartment. We celebrated birthdays together. I also went to their houses. That was quite normal.’
In 1935, Jürgen was fortunate enough to go on one of the trips to Horserød, Denmark, organized by the Berlin Jewish community. ‘For once I could eat as much as I wanted.’
A year later, he took part in a trip organized by the Reich Association of Jewish Veterans, again to Denmark, during the Olympic Games in Berlin (1 to 16 August 1936). ‘The Nazis toned things down. They wanted to show other countries how wonderful everything was in Germany. The Jewish benches and “no Jews” signs were removed.’
The attempt by Nazi Germany to cover up the antisemitism during the Summer Games from the many visitors, athletes and journalists in Berlin was only partially successful. Antisemitic signs were still to be found, even in the vicinity of the Olympic stadiums.7 In reality there was no interruption to the Nazi terror. Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established just outside Berlin almost at the same time as the Games, and the first fifty inmates were interned there on 12 July 1936. By the end of 1936, it already had 1,600 internees. The camp was to be a model for the large-scale expansion of the concentration camp system by the Nazi regime.8
Or, again, two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games, on 16 July 1936, around 600 Roma and Sinti, including many children, from the Reich capital were put in an internment camp in the Marzahn suburb of Berlin. Almost all of them were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.9
In 1938, Wolfgang’s fellow pupils and neighbourhood children began to call him names (‘Jude – Itzig – Lebertran [cod liver oil]’). ‘I was cut off. When, in my childish innocence, I would go up to these boys, who had been in my house, they turned away. I had no reason not to like them anymore.’
Wolfgang wanted to go to the grammar school. ‘There was no problem with admission.’ But shortly afterwards, his parents received a letter saying that for ‘race reasons’ their son would no longer be accepted at the grammar school. In November 1938, Jewish children were banned from attending state schools.10 Wolfgang was able to attend one of the twenty-four Jewish schools in Berlin,11 at Klopstockstrasse 58 in the Hansaviertel. He later switched to the school in Joachimsthaler Strasse, the headquarters of the Jewish community after the Second World War in the divided Berlin.
A favourite meeting place after school was the Jüdisches Lehrhaus at Marburger Strasse 5 near Bahnhof Zoo. It had a library with books for young people that Wolfgang liked to go to. Apart from reading, the children played table tennis, draughts or chess. ‘There was also a Jewish lunch menu. The owners were called Kugel.’ On the night of the state-organized pogrom on 9–10 November 1938, during which Jewish citizens were arrested and murdered and almost all synagogues in Germany were laid waste and burned to the ground,12 the windows of Pension Kugel were also broken, chairs thrown out onto the street and the library ransacked. At that time, the children in Fritschestrasse began to throw pieces of coal and stones at their former classmate Wolfgang Wermuth. ‘There was one family – the father was some kind of civil servant – with three sons. The youngest, Dieter Neugebauer, still visited me secretly, although his parents had strictly forbidden it. His mother didn’t go into a shop when my mother was in there. She waited outside until my mother left.’ The concierge in the house was quite forthright. He complained about the ‘Jews with their dirty feet’. Close neighbours could be heard making negative comments on the stairs. No one in the street wanted anything more to do with the Wermuths and the other Jews living there. No one wanted to know them or ever to have done so.
On 12 November 1938, Jews were banned from visiting theatres, cinemas, concerts and exhibitions.13 This exclusion from cultural life was a severe blow for the Wermuths. ‘My parents knew a lot of theatre and film people. They were friends with many of the regulars at the Romanisches Café [an artists’ meeting place at Kurfürstendamm 238, now Budapester Strasse 43]. My father even played skat with the film director Ernst Lubitsch when he lived in Berlin.’
In 1938, Siegmund Wermuth had to stop working altogether, and was forced to collect rubbish. He worked occasionally for Siemens as a vacuum cleaner salesman in the outer districts, but in November 1938 this also stopped. Since 1933, the Nazis had tightened the labour market for Jews. They were now classed with ‘asocials’, a concept with a long tradition in political propaganda. In late 1938, German and stateless Jews had to work in special areas isolated from the other employees. This applied at first to Jews who had been forced into unemployment and then, from mid-1940, to all Jews up to a certain age.14
Siegmund Wermuth found it ‘very decent’ to be given a large radio as a retrospective Christmas bonus from Siemens:
For a long time, my father thought he was safe. He was a decorated First World War veteran. The Jews had risked their lives and spilled their blood for this country. Didn’t that count for anything anymore? My father thought that they might strip the Jews of their citizenship and make them stateless, but he still didn’t feel directly affected by much of what was going on. It was as if the neighbour’s house was burning but my house wouldn’t necessarily catch fire as a result. That’s how a lot of people felt until they were up to their necks in water.
Wolfgang’s parents were simply unable to believe what was happening around them. They accepted a lot, thinking that it couldn’t go any further. They no longer recognized people they thought they knew. Their world collapsed around them. Literally everything slid out of control. But they still hoped that it would all pass.
In early December 1938, the Jews were banned from using certain streets and squares. The term ‘Judenbann’ [ban on Jews] was coined for that purpose.15 The lives of the Wermuth and Loewenstein families were almost completely confined to their own four walls.
Of course, Jewish families – including the Loewensteins and Wermuths − in Berlin and Germany considered emigrating. But the Loewensteins didn’t have enough money. Wolfgang Wermuth now had contact only with Jewish children. In his family as well, emigration became the main topic of conversation. ‘Should we go? If so, where to? What about visas?’ It all happened very quickly. ‘Suddenly there were only sixteen children left of the original thirty or so pupils.’ This made those left behind uncertain and worried. They envied the émigrés. ‘At home I was consoled by being told that emigration was highly uncertain and that perhaps it would get better.’ Some of the Wermuths’ relatives and their families had also fled abroad.
The Sochaczewer and Loewenstein families wanted at least to get Jürgen out of Nazi Germany. He was sent to a ‘hakhshara’, an agricultural school, in preparation for emigration to Palestine.16
On 1 September 1939, Jürgen was standing on the platform at the train station in Sommerfeld (Niederlausitz) waiting for a narrow-gauge train to take him to nearby Schniebinchen. He was carrying his meagre possessions in a cardboard box tied up with string.
‘Hey, kid, where are you going?’ a man asked him.
‘Schniebinchen.’
‘Aha,