Chocolate Cake With Hitler (8 page)

1941

Papa showed us a new film he’d made, called
The Eternal Jew
. It’s all about Jews and what they believe and how they live. It’s revolting. It shows you all the bugs and dirt in Jewish houses, and how Jews are like rats, but they can disguise themselves to look like
normal
people, so you have to be very careful. Papa told us that they were planning to introduce a law which would make Jews wear a yellow badge on their coats so that they could be easily recognised. The idea comes from England, where it was used hundreds of years ago. It stops Jews pretending that they’re normal and
deceiving
people, and makes it easier to round up the Jews and send them all out of the country, which is what they did in England in the end, though they let them back later.

The film dragged on a bit and all the others fell asleep. Suddenly there was a warning on the screen:
Don’t watch the next bit if you are sensitive!
Papa said he thought I was old enough to watch it.

It was about Jewish butchery. It showed these Jews killing a cow. It was unbelievably disgusting. They took this long, sharp knife and with one sudden slash they slit the cow’s throat. Blood poured out. I couldn’t believe that cows had so much blood; hot, steaming blood. The poor cow made a feeble attempt to raise itself and then just lay twitching for ages till it died.
Papa says that Uncle Leader is going to make this kind of killing illegal. I asked Papa if I could become a vegetarian like Uncle Leader but he said not until I’m 21. He promised that we would never eat meat that’s been killed by Jews.

I asked Papa whether Grandpa Friedlander was like the Jews in the film. He got very angry and told me that I was never to call him that, he wasn’t my grandpa, and he wasn’t a person we talked about. He said Granny B. was exactly the sort of person who needed the
yellow-badge
law to protect her and to stop her from mixing with the wrong people. I didn’t mention the Jewish friends I knew Mummy had when she was growing up.

After the war broke out in 1914, Mummy and Granny B. and Grandpa Friedlander – I don’t know what else I could call him, I don’t even know his first name – returned to Berlin and went to live in a large villa. Each room had been assigned to refugees. Single people had to share, but because they were a family the Friedlanders had a room to themselves – one of the upstairs
bedrooms
. There was nowhere to cook, so every lunchtime Mummy went with her mother to a Red Cross soup kitchen and joined the queue for hot food. Grandpa Friedlander spent every day looking for work,
eventually
finding a position in a top hotel. They were now
able to afford a little flat. They found one in a Jewish quarter where Grandpa Friedlander had lived before they went to Brussels. Mummy started at the nearby school.

Although Mummy now spoke fairly good German, she still thought in French. She could understand the teachers but when she answered questions her
sentences
would start in German and finish in French. No one thought this particularly strange, because a lot of the students were refugees, speaking German as a
second
language. Granny B. says this was the first time Mummy really made friends.

“There was a girl called Lisa, a neighbour of ours. She would walk home from school with your mother and most days they ended up going back to Lisa’s flat to do their homework together. Lisa’s family had
originally
escaped from Russia. Her father had died there, but Lisa’s mother was a strong woman and she managed to make a good life for herself and her son and two daughters in Berlin. Your mother loved to visit them. Their apartment was always full of young people. Lisa’s older brother, Victor, was quite a
character
– very political, even at that age. Passionate about Palestine. He believed that there should be a Jewish homeland in Palestine – they called it Zion. At the time I thought it was a pipe dream – youthful enthusiasm – but looking back I think he was right. As we have all come to realise, Germany is not the best place for
Jews. They don’t fit in here.

“Anyway, it was more fun for your mother at the Arlosoroffs’ than it was at home, being an only child. Like your mother, they were very musical, always
singing
songs around the piano. And Victor used to hold all these weekly meetings for Zionists. Your mother used to go. She got quite swept up by it all. You have to remember this was the war. Food was short. You had to queue for hours for bread, and when you got it, it tasted like the rye had been mixed with sawdust. It was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The news from the front wasn’t good. These young Jewish people, well, their group was actually called “Hope of Zion” – they had hope, they had a dream of a better world, and your mother loved that. And then, of course, there was Victor himself: not a good-looking boy, well, I never thought so – uncontrollable hair and round black glasses – but there was no denying his energy, his authority. Rather like your father in that way. He was a natural leader. I think they all saw him as the first leader of the new homeland they were going to create.

“Your mother fell for him, utterly. I first had an
inkling
of her feelings on her fifteenth birthday. Grandpa Friedlander brought her a cake from the hotel. Oh, it was wonderful – real white flour, flavoured with a little cocoa – which was very scarce because of the English blockades. It was as light as a feather. So, we had a little
birthday tea – the three of us and Lisa and Dora Arlosoroff. It was lovely.  

“The next day Magda came straight back from school. Without even taking off her coat she opened the cake tin. ‘Mama, there’s still lots of cake left. You and me and Papa will never finish it. I’m going to take it round to the Arlosoroffs’.’  

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s very sweet of you, but don’t you think Lisa and Dora had enough yesterday?’  

“‘Maybe, but Victor didn’t get any. He loves cake.’  

“With that she was back off out the door, cake tin under her arm, satchel lying by the front door where she had dropped it. She wasn’t the kind of girl to ask permission before she did something. If she knew what she wanted to do, she did it.  

“It must have been a year or two later that your mother came bursting into our bedroom after an evening at the Arlosoroffs’. ‘Mama, Papa – I have the most marvellous news! Victor has asked me to marry him. And I have accepted. Not now, of course. We are going to save up to move to Palestine. We will make a new life there, not just for ourselves, but a new society – one without poverty or oppression!’  

“I don’t know, young people always think they have all the answers. And what she thought she was going to save up, I have no idea. She was still a schoolgirl. But there, she had her dreams and they made her happy.

“The war ended on the day your mother was
seventeen. But it was not the victory we had been expecting. There was a strange atmosphere in Berlin. Marches and street fights. You could hear gunshots. Bands of marauding sailors. It was dangerous. I
remember
your mother being sent home early from school because the streets weren’t safe. Of course the King abdicated. It felt like the country was falling apart. We couldn’t believe we’d lost – and on what terms – it was a humiliation. And the thing was, we all knew we hadn’t lost the fight. We weren’t invaded. Our defences weren’t broken. No. It was not the war we had lost. It was the peace negotiations. Everyone said we’d been stabbed in the back. The enemy didn’t defeat us, we were betrayed. Naturally a lot of people blamed the Jews. People said that they had been busy making money instead of fighting for the fatherland. It wasn’t true in our neighbourhood. We knew several Jewish boys who had lost their lives fighting – poor Hans Silberstein was the first. A nice boy. And as for the
supposed
wealth of the Jews – well, there was little sign of it around us. But there were incidents, tensions. Smashed windows. Spitting in the street. It wasn’t an easy time being married to a Jew, I must say, and that took its toll. It was bound to.

“Your mother had by now left school and she
persuaded
Grandpa Ritschel to send her to a finishing school. She thought it would open the door to grand society. She got ever so cross with me because she felt I
should have had a place arranged for her as soon as she left school.

“‘You can’t stand in the way of my destiny. What do you expect me to do? Take in needlework and spend the rest of my life in the Berlin suburbs? Well I’m going to make something of myself and you can’t hold me back!’ All sorts of histrionics we had.

“Of course, the truth was that I didn’t have the funds for one of these finishing schools, but in the end she persuaded Grandpa Ritschel. He kitted her out with a new wardrobe, the latest fashion, everything she could possibly need to become a smart young lady. Off she went to this academy in the mountains – to be finished. Naturally, it was rather a disappointment. Very strict and snooty. It can’t have helped having a surname like Friedlander. I remember her excitement when she returned for her first holiday. It was only for a few days. She had been given special permission to come home for Grandpa Friedlander’s birthday. Victor was 21 a few days later, and she was able to stay for his party too. She was glowing. All her beautiful clothes. Her new bobbed haircut. She was thrilled to be back in Berlin and to see all her friends. We had a lovely dinner for Grandpa Friedlander and we sang all the old folksongs. And then of course there was Victor’s party.

“I’ve never got to the bottom of what happened that night. She went off happily enough in a lovely silver dress and a big silk rose in her hair. She looked
beautiful. But, most unlike her, she came back early. I heard her slamming the front door as I was getting ready for bed. I knew it wasn’t worth going to see what the matter was. She would never talk when she was upset. I thought it would have just blown over by the morning. But no, she was still in a terrible mood at breakfast. She pushed her porridge around the bowl. Glared at the table. Barely said goodbye to Grandpa Friedlander.

“I took her to the station, silence all the way, and then – even though we were there in fairly good time – we couldn’t find her a seat. Every one that was empty had a reserved ticket on it. I left her with her bags beside a reserved compartment up at one end of the train and walked right to the other end to see if I could find a single seat. By the time I got back she was sitting comfortably inside the compartment chatting away to two gentlemen.

“‘Mother, I have been rescued. These two gentleman have very kindly invited me to join them. Let me
introduce
you – my mother, Mrs. Friedlander – Dr. Quandt and Mr. Schwartz.’

“‘Please, there’s no need to thank us. We were
expecting
to be joined by some colleagues who have now decided to travel tomorrow. It is a pleasure to meet you.’

“The man she had introduced as Dr. Quandt leapt up to shake my hand. He was a man about my age,
quite stout and obviously quite bald despite some careful combing, but with brilliant blue eyes. I had no idea then that he was one of the most successful
businessmen
in Germany, but I could tell immediately that he was an exceptional man. What struck me most was how extraordinarily like Grandpa Ritschel he looked.

“There was no sign now of Magda’s black mood. She kissed me warmly and off I went, with no other thought in my head other than how nice it was that she had recovered her temper before she left.

“The next time I saw her must have been about three weeks later. She turned up in Berlin unannounced. Now, Grandpa Friedlander had been ill. My sister, who lived in Magdeburg, had had her first grandchild and my niece Konstanze had sweetly asked me to be
godmother
. Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave my husband. He was very frail. So I asked Magda to represent me as godmother and again she got special permission to leave school for the family event. She was supposed to return to her school straight from the christening. However, she did no such thing, but made her way to Berlin.