Mixed emotions: A return to Hamburg

In September 2003, I set off from Stansted somewhat reluctantly for a visit to Hamburg, the city where I was born. I was travelling with my surviving sister, Inge, who is 14 years older than I. She was accompanied by her granddaughter, who says she will never forget the experience – a view shared by myself and others in the party, who had travelled from Israel, Argentina, Uruguay, Canada, Australia and the USA. Everyone had been invited to bring a companion. Their trip, like ours, was paid for by the Senate of Hamburg, which had invited us as ‘former citizens’ to revisit the city of our birth and see for ourselves how it had changed since we had been forced to leave a lifetime ago. There were 15 ‘Hamburgers’ and with our ‘companions’ we stayed at a five-star hotel with all trips paid for. The generosity was unbelievable. Our companions were there because they recognize that the experience can be very stressful. On the first morning we all recounted our family stories and from that emotional moment on, we bonded and became family-like. Two of our members had been in concentration camps and all had family who had. The stories are all commonplace but it is a draining experience to hear over and over again chilling phrases such as ‘I never saw my father (or mother, or brother, or sister) after that …’ There were tears as we listened, but laughter and applause too as one or two people included jokes to lighten the mood. We were then taken around the old Jewish area of the city. It was really nice to be in the area but dreadful to imagine the horrors that happened around those fine houses. My imagination went mad! There were round advertising boards where previously there had been posters showing Jews in a mocking light – in my mind’s eye I could see people laughing and mocking my parents. But I felt how lovely that the boards were now there for real advertising purposes and there was no threat. Our hosts hired a boat to take us down the Elbe. I kept thinking of my parents, who must have done this trip and known all the sights. This is where the great freighters, the traditional source of Hamburg’s wealth, are to be seen. It was lovely sitting in the fresh air chatting to my sister, who remembered her childhood here. They also hired a canal boat which took us down the Alster, providing us with beautiful views as well as refreshments. The Jewish/Christian Society of Hamburg together with WIZO gave us a warm reception and supper in the synagogue hall. The synagogue has a permanent police guard. It was strange to see German police providing Jews with security. On the Friday evening several of us went to synagogue. My father would have been so pleased to have known I was there. Two men in our group wore skull caps knitted by someone in their family before they fled Hamburg. I thought they were knitted when my family were in Hamburg – a strange emotion. The entire synagogue visit had a very special feeling attached to it: ‘Look, Hitler we’re back, and you aren’t!’ I said a little prayer for those who had perished. There are few German Jews in Hamburg – our prayer book was in Hebrew and Russian. Some of us went to family graves as well as visiting people they knew there. The Senate also treated us to an evening of ballet. I saw the shop where my father had been a buyer although it has changed its name. So many strange feelings. Odd to think that one of our group had also fled to Shanghai like my father and had been in the typhoid hospital where he worked. As guests of the Mayor of Hamburg, Ole von Beust, and the Senate, we were taken to the beautiful town hall for a splendid lunch in the Kaisersaal. Inge and I were invited to sit on either side of the Mayor, who was charming. He told us how seriously Hamburg took these visits of ‘former citizens’. My sister, who has never given a speech in her life, was asked to give the thank-you speech at the end of the lunch and couldn’t resist saying how proud our parents would have been. An understatement! We were photographed and an article with our photo appeared in the national newspaper Die Welt. There were magic moments when I could only just control my feelings. The visit to my sister’s school, her face, her memories – words cannot describe what we felt. It is now an institute for Jewish studies. Children come there for history lessons. They see a film which doesn’t show the worst horrors, although they are described. Today’s children see Jewish children of the 1930s made to stand with their backs to a blackboard while the others in the class make fun of them and signs above their heads ram home the message that Jews are the enemies of Germans. There is an exhibition of photos of the time and one of our group recognized her class. She pointed to one girl and told me her name, adding that after putting her on the Kindertransport train, her parents had gone home and committed suicide. My sister pointed to a building outside and asked if it had been the gym. It had. She could remember it as well as some of her teachers’ names even though she is now 79. They have preserved the science room as it was and imagine how everyone felt when Inge sat in the place she had occupied all those years ago! Photos of that moment are now all over the world. After that we went to the Talmud Torah school. It had been a boys’ school. The Jewish community are holding on to it in the hope they can raise enough money to reopen it as a Jewish school. They don’t have the money to renovate it. A member of the Jewish community opened the building up for us and said ‘I don’t know anything about the school but I think we are standing in what was the hall’ – whereupon one of our group said he had gone to the school and we were standing in what had been the gym. He went on to talk about the school and said that when things got very difficult the director of the school had opened a class for girls, an unheard-of thing! Ellen, from Jerusalem, said she had been a member of that class. She paid tribute to the head and I thought it very touching that all these years later a former pupil should be so glowing in her praise of him. What better tribute! I was much moved also by the fact that my sister had often spoken of her visits to our maternal grandmother’s old people’s home and suddenly there it was in front of us. She pointed out the exact room. I felt as though I was living her previous life in Hamburg. It had been the subject of my childhood nightmares, although Iwas only 11 months old when my mother escaped with me to England. By a miracle, my parents and all my siblings survived and so my sister and I consented to be interviewed by students of Hamburg University. The recording will be used for educational purposes. Young Germans cannot understand how it all happened and there is remorse. These are not the perpetrators of those hideous crimes. And so the sights went on. I even saw the road where I was born. The hospital itself is still standing and still in use. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if the people who had been there in 1938 would come out to greet us. One of our party, a lady from Uruguay, said to another, Mr Kauffman, now an American citizen, that she could name the dogs he had owned nearly 70 years ago and proceeded to do so. He couldn’t believe it because she had been his door neighbour. What made her choose this trip at the same time as he had? There are four trips a year and they have been going on for years. At the end, I collected money for flowers for the organizers and an elderly man asked if he could give a short speech. He said he had been to Hamburg twice before and had hated it, but now he realized that the Holocaust was slipping into history and he found people in Hamburg now very friendly. This frail old man had travelled from St Louis to make his peace with the city of his birth, a ‘closure’ of the most touching kind. That alone made the trip worthwhile. I had declined invitations for years and had not really wanted to go this time, indeed had gone only for my sister’s sake. I still have mixed emotions, but it was an experience I’m glad I’ve had. Sue Barnett (née Frankenberg)