I Remember –
Ich denke an …
Tanya Josefowitz
Edited and annotated with an afterword by
Herausgegeben, ins Deutsche übersetzt, mit Anmerkungen
und einem Nachwort versehen von
Jörg W. Rademacher
Table of contents / Inhaltsverzeichnis
Worms, where I was born and where we lived,
Once on the moving train, it was like turning a page of my life
On our way to Le Havre we spent 24 hours in Paris.
On the day of arrival Mother again was simulating emotion rather than illness.
In Germany I don’t recall ever having been allowed alone on the street,
In 1933/34 Vladi and I went to a Kindergarten run by nuns, where we were very happy.
When Mother had fully recovered,
I feel I had to write this true story …
I wish also to remember those 30 members …
Worms, wo ich geboren wurde und wo wir lebten,
Auf unserem Weg nach Le Havre verbrachten wir 24 Stunden in Paris.
Am Ankunftstag simulierte Mutter erneut Gefühle, statt Krankheit.
Nach Mutters völliger Genesung …
Mich drängte ein Gefühl zur Niederschrift meiner eigenen Geschichte
Denken möchte ich auch an jene 30 Mitglieder …
Acknowledgments / Danksagungen
Picture credits / Abbildungsnachweise
Editor’s notes / Anmerkungen des Herausgebers
Index of names and places / Namens- und Ortsregister
I REMEMBER
Tanya Josefowitz
Edited and annotated with an afterword by Jörg W. Rademacher
This is the second book authored by Tanya Josefowitz, while the first, entitled Capinero. A Bird, was privately published in Switzerland in 1992. Discovered in May 2019, it is in the process of being edited and translated, and it will appear in due course.
Editor’s note, January 2021
Ilya Kagan arrived in Worms as a Russian Prisoner of War in 1914. Interned, he created a carpenter’s workshop, producing furniture and training people, thus doing useful work and gaining friends. Once well-integrated, he decided to stay on in Worms.
J. W. R., editor
I dedicate this book to all the generous people who have the courage to vanquish their fears in the face of unquestionable danger, in order to help others in imminent oppression.
T. J., London, June 1999
Tanya Kagan at age 12.
Worms, where I was born and where we lived, was a small but beautiful old town1. My parents were quite well known there and everybody seemed to like them, including the officials of the city who would close an eye to the warm relationships they had with Christian friends. Many of my parents’ friends were not Jewish, and after Hitler’s rise to power they were not permitted to mingle with Jews. In spite of it, as food for Jewish people was rationed, my parents’ friends would secretly come at night with baskets full of eggs, cheese, meat, butter, etc. concealed under some cloth.
I remember the one particular crucial night when we had such visitors. It was around 9.30 in the evening in March 1938.2 My brother Vladimir and I were already in bed. He was nine and a half and I was eight years old. In the next room we heard the guests and parents laugh and talk in hushed voices. They seemed quite animated and full of fun. Outside, as usual, there was the click and clack of booted feet marching in unison along the cobblestone pavement under our nursery window.
The Gestapo always marched in groups, wearing high boots with metal tips and heels whose rhythmic sound could be heard all over town. Vladimir and I had gotten used to these sounds. But that night, when the loud steps came to a sudden halt outside our house and when the door bell hit us like a bolt, we sat up in bed, all ears, frozen and paralysed with fear.
The intimate, cheerful conversation in the sitting