Monday, May 21, 2012

1939-1945: The Edelweiss Pirates pt II

http://libcom.org/history/1939-1945-the-edelweiss-pirates#comment-482349


1939-1945: The Edelweiss Pirates

An account of the Edelweiss Pirates, a World War II era German anti-Nazi movement of working class youth who fought against the regime.




Hitler’s power may lay us low,

And keep us locked in chains,

But we will smash the chains one day,

We’ll be free again

We’ve got fists and we can fight,

We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out

We want freedom, don’t we boys?

We’re the fighting Navajos!

Why were the Nazis able to control Germany so easily? Why was there so little active opposition to them? Why were the old parties of the SPD and KPD unable to offer any real resistance? How could a totalitarian regime so easily contain what had been the strongest working class in Europe?



We are taught that the Nazis duped the German population and that it took the armed might of the Allies to liberate Europe from their enslavement. This article aims to show how the Nazis were able to contain the working class and to tell some of the tales of resistance that really took place.



Dealing with the opposition

Acting with a ruthlessness that surprised their opponents, the Nazis banned their opponents, the Social Democrats and the Communists. For the working class this was far more serious than just the destruction of two state capitalist parties. It was accompanied by the annihilation of a whole area of social life around working class communities. Many of the most confident working class militants were arrested and sent to concentration camps.



The repression was carried out legally. The SA (the Brownshirts) now acted in collaboration with the police. Their brutal activities which once had been illegal but tolerated now became part of official state activity. In some circumstances this meant simple actions like beatings. In others, SA groups moved into and took over working class pubs and centres. The effect was to isolate, intimidate and render powerless the working class.



Many workers believed that the Nazis would not remain in power forever. They believed that the next election would see them swept from power and ‘their’ parties returned. Workers only needed to bind their time. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, the myth changed. The role for oppositionists became to keep the party structures intact until such time as the Nazis were defeated. There is no doubt that even the simple act of distributing Socialist (SPD) or Communist (KPD) propaganda took an incredible degree of heroism, for the consequences of being caught were quite clear to all – beatings, torture and death. It meant that families would be left without breadwinners, subjected to police surveillance and intimidation. The result was often passivity and inaction.



As early as 1935, workers were aware of the consequences that ‘subversive’ activity would have on their families. A blacksmith in 1943 expressed the problem simply: “My wife is still alive, that’s all. It’s only for her sake that I don’t shout it right in their faces…You know these blackguards can only do all this because each of us has a wife or mother at home that he’s got to think of…people have too many things to consider. After all, you’re not alone in this world. And these SS devils exploit the fact.”




Throughout the period of Nazi rule there was industrial unrest, there were strikes and acts of disobedience and even sabotage. All these, however, attracted the attention of the Gestapo. The Gestapo had the assistance of employers and stooges in the workforce. The least a striker could expect was arrest. As a consequence, those who were politically opposed to the Nazi state kept themselves away from industrial struggle. To be arrested would have led not only to personal sacrifice, but also could have compromised the political organisations to which he or she belonged. To reinforce the message to workers, he Gestapo set up special industrial concentration camps attached to major factories.



To put the intensity of Nazi repression into context, during the period 1933-45, at least 30,000 German people were executed for opposing the state. This does not include countless others who died as a result of beatings, of their treatment in camps, or as a result of the official policy of euthanasia for those deemed mentally ill. Thousands of children were declared morally or biologically defective because they fell below the below the Aryan ‘norm’ and were murdered by doctors. This fate also befell youngsters with mental and physical disabilities as well as many who listened to the wrong kind of music.



However, Nazi domination of the working class did not rely solely on repression. Nazi industrial policy aimed to fragment the class, to replace working class solidarity with Nazi comradeship and solidarity with the state.



To start with, pay rises were forbidden. To strengthen competition, hourly rates were done away with. Piece rates became the norm. If workers wanted to earn more then they would have to produce more. Workers’ interests were to be represented by the German Workers’ Front (DAF), which they were forced to belong to and which of course represented solely the interests of the state and employers.



Unable to obtain pay rises with their employers it became common in a situation of full employment for workers to move from one factory to another in search of higher wages. On the one hand, this defeated the Nazi objectives of limiting pay; on the other hand it further weakened the bonds of solidarity between workers.



Knowing that they could not rule solely through fear, the Nazis gave ‘welfare’ concessions to the working class. Family allowances were paid for the first time; organised holidays and outings were provided at low cost. For many workers this was their first opportunity to go away on holiday. Social activities were provided through Nazi organisations.



There is little evidence that the Nazis won over the working class ideologically, nonetheless, this combination of repression and amelioration served to confuse many who would otherwise have been outright opponents.



The spectacles we have all seen of Nazi rallies, book burnings, parades and speeches are not evidence that workers were convinced of Nazi rule. It was clear to all what the consequence of not attending, of not carrying a placard or waving a flag would be. However, they must have increased the sense of isolation and powerlessness of those who would have liked to resist. As a result there was little open resistance from working class adults to the Nazis throughout their period in power.



Young People

If the Nazi policy towards adults was based on coercion, their policy towards young people was subtler. Put simply, the intention was to indoctrinate every young person, to make them a good national socialist citizen proudly upholding the ideals of the party. The means chosen to do this was the Hitler Youth (HJ).



By the end of 1933, all youth organisations outside the Hitler Youth had been banned – with the exception of those controlled by the Catholic Church that was busy cosying up to the Nazis at the time. Boys were to be organised into the Deutsches Jungvolk between the ages of 10 and 14 and the Hitler Youth proper from 14 to 18. They quickly incorporated around 40% of boys. Girls were to be enrolled into the Bund Deutsche Madel (BDM), but the Nazis were much less interested in getting them to join. The objective was to get all boys into the HJ. When this failed to take place, laws were passed gradually making it compulsory by 1939.




In the early days, being in the HJ was far from a chore. Boys got to take part in sports, go camping, hike, play competitive games – as well as being involved in drill and political indoctrination. Being in the HJ gave youngsters the chance to play one form of authority off against another. They could avoid schoolwork by claiming to be involved in HJ work. The HJ provided excuses when dealing with other authority figures – like parents and priests. On the other hand, they could also blame pressures from school in order to get out of more unpleasant Hitler Youth tasks! In some parts of the country the HJ provided the first opportunity to start a sports club, to get away from parents, to experience some independence.



As the 1930s went on, the function of the HJ and BDM changed. The objectives of the regime became more obviously military and aimed at conquest. The HJ was seen as a way recruiting and training young men into the armed forces. As war became more likely, the emphasis shifted away from leisure activities and into military training, State policy became of one of forcing all to be in the HJ. T made seemingly harmless activities, like getting together with your mates for an evening, criminal offences if they took place outside the HJ of BDM.



The HJ set up its own police squads to supervise young people. These Streifendienst patrols were made up of Hitler Youth members scarcely older than those they were meant to be policing.



By 1938, reports from Social Democrats in Germany to their leaders in exile were able to report that: “In the long run young people too are feeling increasingly irritated by the lack of freedom and the mindless drilling that is customary in the National Socialist organisations. It is therefore no wonder that symptoms of fatigue are becoming particularly apparent among their ranks…”



The outbreak of war brought the true nature of the HJ even more sharply into focus. Older HJ members were called up. More and more time was taken up with drill and political indoctrination. Bombing led to the destruction of many of the sporting facilities. The HJ became more and more obviously a means of oppression.



As the demands for fresh recruits to the armed forces became more intense, the divisions within the HJ became more acute. The German education system at the time was sharply divided along class lines. Most working class children left school at the age of 14. A few went on to secondary or grammar schools along with the children of middle class and professional families. As older HJ members were called up, the middle class school students took the place of the leaders. The rank and file was increasingly made up of young workers hardly likely to take too well to being ordered about at HJ meetings! It is not difficult to imagine the scene of a snotty doctor’s kid still in school trying to give orders to a bunch of young factory workers and having to use the threat of official punishment to get his own way. Dissatisfaction grew. Initially, the acute labour shortages of the early war years meant that the Nazis could not resort to the kind of Nazi terror tactics that they employed against other dissidents. As the war went on, many of these young people’s fathers died or were sent to the front. Many were bombed out of their own homes. The only future they could see for themselves was to wear a uniform and fight for a lost cause.



One teenager said in 1942: “Everything the HJ preaches is a fraud. I know this for certain, because everything I had to say in the HJ myself was a fraud.”



By the end of the 1930s, thousands of young people were finding ways to avoid the clutches of the Hitler Youth. They were gathering together in their own gangs and starting to enjoy themselves again. This terrified the Nazis, particularly when the teenagers started to defend their own social spaces physically. What particularly frightened the Nazis was that these young people were the products of their own education system. They had no contact with the old SPD or KPD, knew nothing of Marxism or the old labour movement. They had been educated by the Nazis in Nazi schools, their free time had been regimented by the HJ listening to Nazi propaganda and taking part in officially approved activities and sports.



These gangs went under different names. Their favoured clothes varied from town to town, as did their badges. In Essen they were called the Farhtenstenze (Travelling Dudes), in Oberhausen and Dusseldorf the Kittelbach Pirates, in Cologne they were the Navajos. But all saw themselves as Edelweiss Pirates (named after an edelweiss flower badge many wore).



Gestapo files in Cologne contain the names of over 3,000 teenagers identified as Edelweiss Pirates. Clearly, there must have been many more and their numbers must have been even greater when taken over Germany as a whole.



Initially, their activities were in themselves pretty harmless. They hung around in parks and on street corners, creating their own social space in the way teenagers do everywhere (usually to the annoyance of adults). At weekends they would take themselves off into the countryside on hikes and camping trips in a perverse way mirroring the activities initially provided by the HJ themselves. Unlike the HJ trips, however, these expeditions comprised boys and girls together, so adding a different, more exciting and more normal dimension than provided by the HJ. Whereas the HJ had taken young people away for trips to isolate and indoctrinate them, the Edelweiss Pirates expeditions got them away from the Party and gave them the time and space to be themselves.



On their trips they would meet up with Pirates from other towns and cities. Some went as far as to travel the length and breadth of Germany doing wartime, when to travel without papers was an illegal action.






Daring to enjoy themselves on their own was a criminal act. They were supposed to be under Party control. Inevitably they came across HJ Streifendienst patrols. Instead of running, the Pirates often stood and fought. Reports sent to Gestapo officers suggest that as often as not the Edelweiss Pirates won these fights. “I therefore request that the police ensure that this riff-raff is dealt with once and for all. The HJ are taking their lives into their hands when they go out on the streets.”






The activities of the Edelweiss Pirates grew bolder as the war progressed. They engaged in pranks against the allies, fights against their enemies and moved on to small acts of sabotage. They were accused of being slackers at work and social parasites. They began to help Jews, army deserters and prisoners of war. They painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls and some started to collect Allied propaganda leaflets and shove them through people’s letterboxes.






“There is a suspicion that it is these youths who have been inscribing the walls of the pedestrian subway on the Altebbergstrasse with the slogans ‘Down with Hitler’, ‘The OKW (Military High Command) is lying’, ‘Medals for Murder’, ‘Down with Nazi Brutality’ etc. However often these inscriptions are removed within a few days new ones appear on the walls again.” (1943 Dusseldorf-Grafenberg Nazi Party report to the Gestapo).



As time went on, a few grew bolder and even more heroic. They raided army camps to obtain arms and explosives, made attacks on Nazi figures other than the HJ and took part in partisan activities. The Head of the Cologne Gestapo was one victim of the Edelweiss Pirates.



The authorities reacted with their full armoury of repressive measures. These ranged from individual warnings, round-ups and temporary detention (followed by a head shaving), to weekend imprisonment, reform school, labour camp, youth concentration camp or criminal trial. Thousands were caught up in this hunt. For many, the end was death. The so-called leaders of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were publicly hanged in November 1944.



However, as long as the Nazis needed workers in armament factories and soldiers for their war, they could not resort to the physical extermination of thousands of young Germans. Moreover, it is fair to say that the state was confused as to what to do with these rebels. They came from German stock, the sort of people who should have been grateful for what the Nazis gave. Unwilling to execute thousands and unable to comprehend what was happening, the state was equally unable to contain them.



Wall of Silence

So why has so little been heard of the Edelweiss Pirates? When I started researching this article, I found it extremely hard to find information about them. Most seemed to revolve around the research of the German historian Detlev Peukert, whose writings remain essential reading. Searches of the internet revealed only two articles.



A number of explanations come to mind. The post-war Allied authorities wanted to reconstruct Germany into a modern, western, democratic state. To do this, they enforced strict labour laws including compulsory work. The Edelweiss Pirates had a strong anti-work ethos, so they came into conflict with the new authorities too. A report in 1949 spoke of the “widespread phenomenon of unwillingness to work that was becoming a habit of many young people.” The prosecution of so-called ‘young idlers’ was sometimes no less rigid under Allied occupation than it was under the Nazis. A court in 1947 sent one young woman to prison for five months for ‘refusal to work’. The young became enemies of the new order too.



The political opponents of the Nazis had been either forced into exile, murdered or hid their politics. Clandestine activity had centred on keeping party structures intact. They could not afford to acknowledge that physical resistance had been alive and well and based on young people’s street gangs! To the politicians of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and SPD, the Edelweiss Pirates were just as much riff-raff as they were to the Nazis. The myth of the just war used by the allies relied heavily on the idea that all Germans had been at least silent during the Nazi period if not actively supporting the regime. To maintain this fiction the actions of ‘street hooligans’ in fighting the Nazis had to be forgotten.



Decades on, interest in the Edelweiss Pirates is beginning to resurface. More is being published on them and a film is being planned. We need to make sure that they are never forgotten again. As the producers of the film say: “the Edelweiss Pirates were no absolute heroes, but rather ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” It is precisely this that gives us hope for the future.






We march by banks of Ruhr and Rhine


And smash the Hitler Youth in twain.


Our song is freedom, love and life,


We’re the Pirates of the Edelweiss.

The Edelweiss Pirates



http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#pirates
The Edelweiss Pirates




I want a brutal, domineering, fearless cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes. That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication. That is how I will create the New Order.



Adolph Hitler



Hitler's power may lay us low,

And keep us locked in chains,

But we will smash the chains one day,

We'll be free again.

We've got the fists and we can fight,

We've got the knives and we'll get them out.

We want freedom, don't we boys?

Song of the Edelweiss Pirates (Peukert, p. 158)


There were many young people in Nazi Germany who resisted the cruelties of the Nazi Youth and remained true to their own codes of moral conduct. The Edelweiss Pirates was one of the largest youth groups who refused to participate in Nazi youth activities. The police were not allowed to arrest members of the Hitler Youth Patrol Service, who were known for their brutality and bullying. Hitler Youth were guilty of many crimes, they broke shop windows, stole, and beat people on the streets. In one case, a group of Hitler Youth broke the windows of the home of a teacher who had given them low marks. The Nazi Youth Patrol raided movie houses, cabarets, billiard halls and coffee shops looking for the Edelweiss Pirates, who stood up to them and even fought with


them on the streets of the cities of Dusseldorf, Essen, Cologne and other industrial cities in western Germany.



The Edelweiss Pirates had different names in different cities, but they shared basic beliefs and attitudes. They were not deprived children or delinquents; most were not even deliberate resistance fighters. They were simply the sons and daughters of working class parents who refused to be bullied into absolute obedience. Most of the Pirates were between 16 to 18 years of age and were too young for military service.



The first Pirates appeared at the end of the 1930's. Dressed in checkered shirts, short dark trousers and white stockings, the Pirates wore metal Edelweiss pins on their collars. Because they lived in the same neighborhoods they had a territorial identity and shared beliefs. Refusing to participate in Nazi Youth activities, they shared a strong sense of social identity and solidarity with one another.



The groups of Edelweiss Pirates consisted of ten to fifteen boys, there were girls in some of the groups too. During the day they worked in factories and mills as unskilled workers and in the evenings and weekends they met together in cafes or in the parks. The high point of their activities together was the hikes they took into the countryside with rucksacks on their backs and their bread and butter rations. At night they slept in barns or tents. Sometimes they rode bicycles deep into the countryside ignoring the Nazi rules. Always on the watch for the dreaded Nazi Youth Patrols, they sometimes provoked street fights, but most of the time they avoided the Nazi Youth.



As the war progressed, social chaos intensified, and many Pirates became active in the underground resistance movement. When the industrial cities were being bombed between 1942 and 1945, the conflicts between the Edelweiss Pirates and the Nazi authorities intensified. Edelweiss Pirates in Cologne offered shelter to German army deserters, escaped prisoners from concentration camps, and escapees from forced. labor camps. Groups of Edelweiss Pirates made armed raids on military depots and deliberately sabotaged war production. The Nazis were determined to suppress them.



A Nazi official wrote, "There is a suspicion that it is these youths who have been inscribing the walls (of the pedestrian underground walkways in the Altenbergstrasse, a boulevard in the center of the city) with the slogans "Down with Hitler". "The OKW (Oberkommande des Wehrmacht) is lying", "Down with Nazi brutality". No

matter how often the writings on the walls were scrubbed away, they were back again after a few days.



Nazi patrols were constantly looking for members of the Pirates and those who were caught were imprisoned, sent to jails, reform schools, psychiatric hospitals, labor and concentration camps and many lost their lives. In a single day of raids in December 1942, the Dusseldorf Gestapo and the Secret Police made more than 1000 arrests. During the round ups, the Nazis were brutal. Captured Pirates had their heads shaven, were threatened and beaten, and often cruelly punished. A member of the Pirates was publicly executed by hanging in the center of

the city of Cologne. The story of the Edelweiss Pirates is a story of courage and resistance.
____________________________________________________________________
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jean-jlich-one-of-the-edelweiss-pirates-who-resisted-the-nazis-6259542.html?origin=internalSearch
Jean Jülich: One of the Edelweiss Pirates, who resisted the Nazis Jean Jülich: One of the Edelweiss Pirates, who resisted the Nazis
Jean Jülich, who has died in his native Cologne aged 82, was one of the last surviving Edelweiss Pirates, the working class German teenagers who ran wild in the ruins of the city during the last years of the Third Reich. By 1944 as many as five thousand tearaways were living as outlaws in Hamburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt and in the heavily bombed cities of the Rhine and Ruhr valleys. Known sometimes as Navajos, Ruhrpiraten, Harlem-Club or even Meuten [wolf packs], they were usually under military age and had evaded the compulsory Hitler youth organisations.




Boys and girls wore long hair, short shorts and distinctive checked shirts decorated by a small badge or pin in the shape of the edelweiss flower.



Jean Jülich tramped the hills south of Bonn with his guitar, singing attheir secret meetings. He had lived with his grandparents from the age of seven, after seeing his communist father badly beaten by SS men and jailed for high treason. In a deserted bomb-disposal bunker, the Navajo group of the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne supplied black market food and shelter to runaway forced labourers, concentration camp escapees, fugitive Jews and German army deserters. They attacked Hitler Youth patrols, derailed ammunition trains, catapulted bricks through the roof of a munitions factory and sabotaged machinery.



Their plan to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, using detonators extracted from unexploded British bombs, was discovered after a 24-year-old Edelweiss Pirate had shot dead a Nazi informer.



Jülich was arrested at the age of 15, held in solitary confinement without trial and tortured for four months. His 16-year-old friend, Barthel Schink, was hanged with 11 other Pirates on a public gallows at Ehrenfeld railway station, without trial, on orders from Heinrich Himmler. Jülich survived a year of beatings, starvation and typhus in a concentration camp until liberated by American tanks in 1945.



In "year zero", after the defeat ofGermany, feral surviving Pirates living on their wits in the ruined cities were frequently arrested by Allied military police. One Pirate was sentenced to death, though later reprieved, by amilitary court in Lower Saxony inApril 1946 for his "very active part in carrying out the nefarious schemes of the Edelweiss Piraten. An organisation such as this might well threaten the peace of Europe."



In the Soviet zone, Edelweiss Pirates were routinely jailed for 25 years. In West Germany, the courts ruled that wartime teenage criminal convictions recorded by the Gestapo counted as part of their criminal record. Jülich and a fellow Navajo, Gertrud Koch, codename "Mucki", fought a long campaign to get the Piraten rehabilitated as resisters. Despite being recognised as "righteous gentiles" by Yad Vashem in Israel in 1988, their Gestapo records were not annulled until 2005.



"Mucki" lost her father in a concentration camp. Now 87, she said, "The old Nazi judges used after the war upheld the criminalisation of what we had done and who we were."



During the campaign for recognition, Jülich made a successful recording of a romantic tramping song, "Es War In Shanghai", much loved by the Edelweiss Pirates but banned at Hitler Youth campfires, that tells of a midnight encounter in the Ohio Bar in Shanghai between Heini and Charly from Hamburg and Jim Parker, their comrade from 'Frisco.



Jülich always claimed, "It was not a political song, but it addresses the desire for foreign countries, fellowship and independence. The Nazis did not sing this song because it was not consistent with their ideology."



His 2003 pamphlet Kohldampf, Knast un Kamelle ("Hard Times, Jail and Carnival: An Edelweiss Pirate Looks Back on His Life") was equally romantic.



His wife, Karin, daughter Conny and son Marco were at his bedside when he died in hospital after a heartattack.



Andrew Rosthorn



Jean Jülich, war hero: born Cologne 18 April 1929; married Karin (one son, one daughter); died Cologne 19 October 2011.




Louise

http://www.holocaust-trc.org/faces.htm#louise

Louise




As the persecution of Jews in Germany intensified, life became increasingly dangerous, whole families were deported and sent to concentration camps. By August 1942, very few yellow stars could be seen on the streets of Berlin. Emigration had become impossible and many people went into hiding.



Hiding meant living in constant fear of being recognized and reported; those in hiding has to be constantly alert. The people who helped them hide were in as much danger as the people they hid. Hiding meant staying out of sight for the duration of the war in empty warehouses, bombed out buildings, and rat infested cellars. Some people were able to obtain false identification papers and obtain work, but most of those in hiding depended on other people for food and other necessities. It took enormous courage and determination to survive.



Despite the difficulties, those in hiding were able to help one another. In Berlin, young Jewish people in hiding managed to meet in cafes and keep in touch with one another. They gave one another information about obtaining false identity papers or making contact with "border runners" who could smuggle them out of Germany. Berlin provided a unique opportunity for hiders to find one another. Those who were hiding in the countryside or small towns had few other Jews to help them.



Jewish resistance groups were formed. The Chug Chaluzi was organized in 1942 by Edith Wolff and saved many young people from deportations. This group viewed saving Jewish lives as a form of political resistance. The members met regularly, exchanged information, and organized meals and lodgings for one another. The intense bombing raids over Berlin did not stop them from meeting one another in pre-arranged secret meeting places. It was a miracle that most of the members of this group survived.



Louise had just gone to bed when she heard the loud knocking on the door and



then the words she feared the most, "This is the Gestapo. We have come to search the house. We know you are hiding a Jew."



Louise leaped up from the bed, smoothed the sheets, grabbed her schoolbooks and dashed into the closet. Holding her breath, she could hear the pounding of her heart as the footsteps came closer and closer. Louise felt she had been in the closet for a very long time, but the footsteps disappeared, they did not open the closet door.



Not daring to move and feeling as if all the strength was drained from her body, Louise stayed in the closet until Frau Muenter opened the door. Still clutching her school books, she crawled back into the room.



Frau Muenter tried to smile, but she had tears in her eyes as she helped Louise off the floor. She knew Louise was no longer safe in her home.



Herr and Frau Muenter were social democrats who opposed the Nazi regime. Herr



Muenter was a close friend of Louise's father, an active trade union leader. Arrested after he organized an anti-Nazi protest demonstration, Louise's father, who was not Jewish, was no longer able to protect his wife and child from the anti Jewish laws. Like other Jewish people, Louise and her mother had to wear yellow stars sewn to their clothing and could only shop for food in the late afternoon. Forbidden to go to the school, Louise's mother enrolled her in the Jewish school and they had to move to a small rooming house.



Despite the difficulties, Louise made many friends at the new school, but when the persecution of Jews intensified in 1942, many of her school friends disappeared. Hundreds of Jewish people, young and old were arrested and being sent to concentration camps, and many tried to emigrate to other countries. Sixteen years old, Louise tried to help her mother cope with the difficulties of living in Berlin. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles on her mother's side were arrested and sent away. Her father's parents had died when she was very small and she had no contact with the rest of his family. She had no contact with her father's family. When the Nazis forced the school to close, Louise tried to keep in touch with her Jewish friends.



Louise's mother kept telling her that life would be better as soon as her father got out of jail. But instead of being released, he was sent to a forced labor camp. Herr Muenter was able to see her father before he was moved and he promised him he would look after Louise and her mother.



The final round up of Jews began in February of 1943. Louise was just coming home when a neighbor stopped her and told her that her mother had been arrested and warned her not to go into the rooming house. Louise turned away from the house and recklessly pulled her off her yellow star and then began to run. She crossed the street and headed to the busy street alongside of the canal. It was safer to be walking with other people. A feeling of deep sadness welled up in her as well as fear.



"I have nothing to lose," she thought. "I've lost everyone and everything dear to



me". She did not know where her mother was, her father was far away in a labor camp, her grandparents had died and she did not know her father's family. They lived in another part of Germany. The clouds began to gather and the sun was sinking, it was getting dark. Then she remembered Herr Muenter's words. "If you are ever in trouble, come to me". Louise turned around and began walking to the big apartment complex on the other side of the canal where the Muenters lived. As she approached the large sprawling building, she saw a group of Nazi Youth standing in front of the building. She did not make eye contact and walked more slowly. A housewife with a big bag of food was just entering the building. She stopped at the entranceway of the building and realized she did not know the number of their flat. But before she could speak to the woman who had entered the building with her, she saw Frau Muenter coming towards the entranceway. Frau Muenter was a nurse and was coming home from the hospital. Louise went up to her, but Frau Muenter put her finger to her lips and took her into the courtyard and then into another building. She dared not speak. Frau Muenter took out her key, opened the door to the flat and led her inside. As soon as she closed the door, Louise could not hold back her tears. She told Frau Muenter that her mother had been arrested. A tall stately woman, Frau Muenter put her arms around Louise and held her close.



That morning on her way to work, she saw lines of army trucks with gray canvas covers on the street. The trucks were escorted by armed SS men and stopped at factory gates, in front of private houses and were full of men, women and children. Her heart was heavy and she thought about Louise and her mother.



"You will stay here with us and you will be safe", Frau Muenter "We promised both your mother and your father that we would look after you and we will" Frau Muenter tried to smile.



The Muenters' small flat overlooked the courtyard of the big housing complex. It

had a coalstove, a small kitchen and parlor and two bedrooms. Frau Muneter took Louise to a small bedroom and told her it was her very own room. There was a small bed, a dresser and a chair and a table. The window in the bedroom overlooked the courtyard.



"Make yourself comfortable and try to rest", she told Louise and went into the kitchen to prepare supper.



As soon as Herr Muenter came home that evening, he went to talk to Louise. He told her he was glad that she had come to them. He had heard about the raids on Jewish homes that had become known as the final round-up of the Jews in Berlin. AT dinner that night the Muenters told her that she woul d be safe as long as no one knew she was there. Louise understood that she was now in hiding, she could not leave the flat or answer the door bell. When visitors came to the house, Louise had to stay in her room. Frau Muenter would bring her books and puzzles to keep her amused. Louise asked her for school books too, so she could keep up with her studies.



Frau Muenter left for work early in the morning. She and Louise ate breakfast together and then Louise went to her room and spent the day doing school work and reading the books Frau Muenster brought her. She could not listen to the radio for fear the sound would attract attention. When visitors came, Louise stayed in the bedroom.



The days were long and the Muenters seemed to understand how difficult it was for the young girl to stay in her room day after day. They tried to cheer her up in the evenings and the three of them played cards and talked.



"We'll take it day by day. Before you know it, you will have a normal life again",



Frau Muenter told her.



The Muenters often had visitors and then Louise had to go to her room. Only a very few of their trusted friends klnew she was living with them. Herr Muenter brought her a jigsaw puzzle to work on when she had to stay in the room.



The kindness of Herr and Frau Muenter made Louise miss her parents all the more. Herr Muenter told her many stories about her brave father. Slowly Louise adjusted to the routine and the Muenters were confident that Louise was safe in their home until the night of the Gestapo raid.



After the raid, Frau Muenter discovered that it was her neighbor who had reported them to the Gestapo. The neighbor saw Frau Muenter bring Louise to the flat and when. she asked Frau Muenter about the young girl, Frau Muenter replied , "Oh, she is my niece, she comes to visit now and again". But the woman was already suspicious of the Muenters because they had so many visitors. She watched the flat every day and noticed that the girl Frau Muenter said was her niece, never left the apartment, she reported them to the Gestapo.



The little flat was no longer a safe place for Louise, but Herr Muenter would not let her leave until he could find another safe place. He knew other anti-Nazis and social democrats who were hiding Jewish people. The very next evening, Herr Muenter brought home an address and told Louise to memorize it and throw away the paper. He gave her instructions.

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"You will be safe in this place", he assured her. "I have been told that there will be other young people there. But be very careful that no one sees you enter the building. If there is someone on the street, don't go inside." Herr Muenter gave her a wallet with some money. Frau Muenter gave her some clothing, a skirt, a sweater and two blouses and stuffed them in a paper bag along with some food. Louise was to leave early the next morning. No one slept that night.



After breakfast, Louise hugged Frau Muenter and left the flat. She had to walk along the canal for a mile and calmed herself by looking at the early morning shadows on the water. She could not remember a time when fear was not part of her life. She thought about her mother and her father and wondered if she'd ever see them again. Thinking about her mother, she tried to remember happy times.



She walked a long way and then turned away from the canal as she was told and headed up a small street, she found herself in a neighborhood she did not know, but she did not stop walking until she reached the address she had memorized. It was a deserted building with a broken door and it looked so empty she thought no one was inside. Louise rapped on the door four times, paused and then rapped four times again just as Herr Muenter had instructed.



The door opened and Louise went inside. As soon as the door closed, Louise saw

the boy who had opened the door. It was Gabriel, a boy she knew from the Jewish school. Tall and good looking, Gabriel was a year older than Louise. He often played the violin at the school and wanted to be a musician.



"I'm glad to see you", Gabriel told her.



"Did you know I was coming?" she asked.



"I didn't know it would be you, but I was told to watch for a young girl", he replied.



Gabriel told her that she was now part of a group of young people in hiding and that they looked after one another. The groups that were in hiding were called "U boats".



"You'll be meeting other members of the group. You are not alone. We are going to survive all this cruelty and chaos". He spoke calmly and with confidence as he explained the important rules.



"We never do anything to draw attention to ourselves like walk around in groups or wear funny clothing. And when you see someone you know, walk away as quickly as you can".



Gabriel hid most of the day. As a young man out of uniform, he knew he would arouse suspicion if he walked around the streets and if he wore his Jewish star, he was in even greater danger. Nevertheless, he managed to look after the others.



Looking out for one another often meant bringing parcels of food to hiding places. Knowing there were spies on the street looking for Jewish people in hiding. Whenever a young Jewish person was found to be homeless, Gabriel or some of the others made arrangements for them. People in hiding lived in deserted buildings and cellars, some slept behind counters in grocery or fruit stores. There were also people that Gabriel knew who were willing to smuggle Jewish people out of Berlin.



During the day the members of the group had various hiding places. Some were able to obtain false identity papers and get jobs, but others spent their days in hiding. At night they met together in cafes or cellars. Berlin was famous for its many cafes called kneipen. In working class neighborhoods, there were kneipens on almost every street. Some members took chances and went to theatres or movie houses, but most of young people took hiding very seriously.



That night Louise went with Gabriel to a meeting in a back room of a café, where she met a few of the other young people. One of the girls worked illegally in a laundry run by her Christian aunt. Whenever someone in uniform came to the laundry, she had to run away. A boy who was the same age as Louise had false identification papers and was able to work in a factory and shop in food stores. He often bought food for the others who were not as fortunate. Another girl slept under a bed in a Christian friend's house, but could not stay there during the day and spent the days traveling on streetcars or in the train station, pretending to wait for a train. When she saw a soldier or a Gestapo officer she hid in the public toilet.



Leon worked in an armaments factory in North Berlin and was on his way to work, when a co-worker, a young Frenchman met him in the train station and warned him not to go to work. He had heard a rumor that the Gestapo was looking for Jewish workers. Leon went back to his flat and the next day the Frenchman came and told him to find another place. Leon left his flat and made contact with another Jewish boy on the street who brought him to Gabriel.



Ilse was the daughter of a Christian mother and Jewish father, her blonde hair and blue eyes made her look "Aryan", but her mother died when she was a small girl and she was raised by her Jewish grandparents. When her grandparents and her father were arrested, Ilse managed to escape and to her aunt, her mother's sister, who was able to get her identity card from a priest. Ilse became an active member of the group and like Gabriel, she found suitable hiding places for newer members.



With her identity card, Ilse was able to get work as a waitress in small restaurants, but she never spent more than a few months in any one place, for fear of being discovered.



"I just don't want people to know me too well", she explained. "You never know who's going to give you away".



That night at the meeting in the small café, they At the café meeting, they talked about many things, Jewish holidays, looking for other Jewish young people, and safe hiding places. Louise looked around at the bright young faces and felt good to be counted one of them. After the meeting, Louise went with Ilse to her tiny room in an old rooming house. The owner was an elderly woman who was only interested in getting rent for her rooms and did not ask for identity cards.



The Allies began bombing Berlin in heavy nightly raids in 1943. The bombing raised many new dangers; those without identity cards could not seek shelter in the underground air raid shelters. At the same time, the bombing made it easier to find hiding places. There were also many more homeless people, seeking shelter after their homes had been destroyed. Mothers with crying children, elderly people carrying luggage, and other people filled the streets after the air raids.



Louise, Ilse and the others hid in cellars during the raids. Fire and smoke were everywhere. Ilse managed to find an identity card for Louise with the name "Alice Wissen" printed on it. With the card, Louise was now able to get to a shelter during a raid. She was also in a better position to help Gabriel and Ilse rescue other Jewish young people.



Gabriel learned about a 14 year old boy hiding in a cellar and sent Louise to meet him. The boy's name was Samuel. Louise found him in the cellar of a bombed out building and gave him a parcel of food and some clothing. She looked at the skinny boy and wondered how he managed to stay alive. Samuel had been living by raiding garbage cans or buying stale bread with the few coins he had.



One night when Louise was in a bomb shelter, a girl she knew from school called her name. Louise tried to ignore her, but when the girl persisted, Louise said, "You must have the wrong person. My name is Alice, not Louise."



The girl looked at her and shrugged. "Louise was Jewish so I guess she's not around any more", she said.



The group continued to meet regularly. They even had study sessions to learn more about the Jewish holidays. Together they shaped a strong sense of identity. Belonging to a group gave them courage and determination. One of their favorite topics of conversation was what they would do when the war was over.



There were many rumors of the Nazis losing the war and they heard about the Russian army attacking the Nazi troops inside Germany. Hope rose like a flame as they thought about having a future.



In the spring of 1945 the Allied armies captured Berlin. White sheets were hung from windows and on the lamp posts that were still standing. Every member of the group had survived the war.





The Fall of Berlin, Anthony Read and David Fisher, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992






Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Marion A. Kaplan, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998