In the Garden of Beasts; Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berli

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Erik Larson, Roosevelt, William Dodd

 

The Garden of Beasts in the title of Erik Larson’s book refers to the inhabitants of Berlin’s Tiergarten, the park in central Berlin that once served as the hunting grounds of the local aristocracy and was stocked with all kinds of animals. It also, of course, refers to the Nazi regime in Germany.

This is a thoroughly-researched documentary account of the experiences of a mild-mannered American history professor, William E. Dodd who, together with his wife and two children, both in their early twenties, embarked on a four-and-a-half-year stint in Berlin as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. The story is told through the family’s letters, journals, and memoranda and also draws on the generally-known events of the time, starting with Dodd’s appointment in 1933, the year that marked Hitler’s ‘ascent from chancellor to absolute tyrant.’ By virtue of his ambassadorial position he and his family had access to, and mixed socially with, leading members of the Nazi party, and were able to gain first-hand knowledge of people and events.

Although orginially from a poor family, William Dodd had studied at university, first in Virginia and then in Leipzig in the late nineteenth century. He had acquired a knowledge of the German language and love for the country and its people, and was therefore considered by President Roosevelt to be a suitable candidate for the post of ambassador to Germany, despite opposition from the State Department, many of whose staff were Ivy League graduates from wealthy backgrounds and regarded Dodd as an ‘outsider.’

Initially the Dodd family was enchanted by the atmosphere of optimism and purposefulness that seemed to have overtaken the German nation under its new leadership, but gradually news of brutality towards individuals and groups on one pretext or another – they were Jews, they had failed to give the Nazi salute, etc. – began to accumulate, and the ambassador became ever more disillusioned with the regime.

Dodd’s daughter, Martha, who was something of a social butterfly, frequented night clubs and fancy restaurants and also conducted alliances with various German officials. Her main romantic attachment, however, was to Boris Winogradov, an attaché at the Soviet embassy. This eventually led her to embark on a tour of Russia, which left her disappointed with that country’s drabness and poverty. The NKVD attempted to recruit Martha as a spy on Russia’s behalf, but failed. Boris was recalled to Russia and eventually executed for reasons that remain unclear. After returning to the USA, Martha met and married an American businessman and went to live in New York.

While the book concentrates primarily on the events that took place in the family’s first year in Germany, it was the incident known as the ‘Night of the Long Knives,’ in July 1934, when Ernst Rohm, the head of the S.A. and dozens of his colleagues were murdered in cold blood, that triggered the outright distaste for the regime exhibited by Ambassador Dodd. As he held an official diplomatic post this put him in an invidious position, and he was ultimately defined as ‘persona non grata’ by the German government.

After being recalled from his post, in 1938, Dodd made a point of travelling throughout the USA, warning of the danger presented by Hitler, his visceral animosity towards Jews, his militarism and his expansionist aims. He also spoke out fiercely against American isolationism, but his voice went unheeded, to a great extent because of the inherent opposition to him in the State Department.

No less fascinating than the book itself are Larson’s afterword and notes, which give the reader a glimpse into the cost in personal anguish that researching the book represented for the author. In referring to Ian Kershaw’s seminal study of Hitler he states that he had to keep the book face down on his desk in order not to have to start each day by looking at ‘those hate-filled eyes.’ This book is truly a tour de force, bringing a dark period in history to life in a unique and fascinating way, and casting fresh light on a period about which much has been written.

 

 

A Curious Coincidence and a Visit to Yad Vashem

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Charlotte Salomon, Judith Shendar, Kristallnacht, Serge&Beate Klarsfeld, Shuli Natan

 

The anniversary of the Pogrom of 9^th November 1938, otherwise known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, is marked every year by Jews all over the world. It is not a religious occasion, but does nevertheless serve to unite Jewish communities in recalling the horrors of the Holocaust as exemplified by that one occasion in which over 1,700 synagogues and prayer rooms all over Germany and Austria were burned, pillaged and destroyed. Thousands of Jewish businesses were damaged, and Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The coordinated and violent effort to destroy the basis of Jewish life in Germany served as the ultimate wake-up call for the Jewish population there, and triggered the emigration of those Jews who were able to do so.

Every year Israel’s Association of Jews originally from Central Europe (i.e., mainly Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia) organizes a memorial service to mark the event, and this is held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. When my parents were alive they would attend this event, but I had other concerns and never found the time to go. This year, however, I decided to participate, and I found myself in the company of many people like myself, the Second Generation of Holocaust survivors, as well as a class of teenagers who had come from one of Israel’s schools.

The programme of the event was long and varied, starting with a brief service and wreath-laying ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, and followed by a series of talks and lectures by actual Holocaust survivors as well as scholars and writers talking about specific aspects of that time. One particularly interesting lecture described the work of Charlotte Salomon, whose paintings depict her life, first in Berlin and then in the south of France, where she was eventually captured and then deported to Auschwitz. I knew about her work, having seen it in London several years ago and even have the very detailed catalogue of it, but it was nonetheless moving to hear Ms. Judith Shendar, the art curator at Yad Vashem, talk about the artist’s life and work.

In between the various lectures singer Shuli Natan went up on stage with her guitar and played and sang. It was Shuli Natan who made Naomi Shemer’s song ‘Jerusalem of Gold’ famous in the period around the Six Day War of 1967, and her voice is still strong and moving, albeit an octave or two lower now. The singer told the audience that her family was originally from Hamburg (like mine), having emigrated there in the sixteenth century to escape the Inquisition in Portugal. She ended the occasion by playing that self-same song, this time with the audience’s participation.

I used the opportunity, once the event was over, to visit the Yad Vashem library, having learned from reading the joint autobiography of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, that there were lists of Jews deported to concentration camps by the Nazis in German-occupied France. A few years ago I learned that my mother’s aunt and uncle, Hedwig and Jacob Hirsch, and their three grown-up sons, Sami, Rudi and Kurt, had fled from Germany to France but had all disappeared there. Nothing was known about what happened to them but by a curious coincidence several years ago I met an elderly lady, a painter whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, who told me that she had been engaged to one of them (Rudi, I think), and that they had maintained contact while he was in France and she was in hiding in the Netherlands. She was eventually captured and sent to Theresienstadt, but survived and eventually moved to Israel. I met her (in 1990) at a concert given at Yad Vashem to commemorate the musicians who had been active in Theresienstadt. Because my paternal grandmother had been sent there from Hamburg, and also perished there, I have a special interest in that place.

I gave her a lift from Yad Vashem (who isn’t going to pick up an elderly lady on crutches who is hitch-hiking?) and we agreed to meet for coffee in town. While we were chatting about art and painting and such I happened to mention that one of my relatives, Joseph (‘Boujik’) Hirsch was a fairly well-known artist in Israel, whereupon she exclaimed ‘I was engaged to his cousin!’ That was Rudi, and from her I learned what a wonderful person he had been, and how confident he and his family had been that they would survive the war. My mother and other relatives had also told me about that family and what a terrible loss their passing represented for the family. That lady died a few years ago and I have no way of finding her name.

With the help of one of the librarians at Yad Vashem I traced the documents detailing the route taken by the three brothers, separately from their parents, as the Germans kept detailed lists of all those deported. And so, from the hundreds of pages giving the names, date of birth, place of birth and occupation of each person in every Transport I now know that on 10th August 1942 Sami, Rudi and Kurt Hirsch, aged 31, 26 and 22 respectively, were put on Transport no. 17 from Gurs to Drancy, and thence to Auschwitz, and that their parents, Hedwig and Jacob, aged 54 and 57 followed the same route in Transport no. 40 on 3^rd November that year.

May their memories be blessed.

‘The Nightingale,’

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Caroline Moorhead, French Free Zone, Irene Nemirovsky

 

I picked this book up in the local bookshop thinking it would make good holiday reading. It did, but it’s not exactly the sort of light reading one takes along to read on the beach. The tale it tells of France under German occupation, the ‘exodus’ of thousands of Parisians from the capital, the division of France into an occupied zone and a supposedly ‘free’ zone under the Vichy government has been told many times, and often in vivid terms (vide Irene Nemirovsky’s ‘Suite Francaise’), but in ‘The Nightingale’ we find ourselves face-to-face with the harsh realities of the situation on an almost personal basis.

In ‘The Nightingale’ we come to know two sisters who have grown up in different environments and made different lives for themselves. Vianne, the elder of the two, has a husband and a child and lives a peaceful life in rural France. Her rebellious younger sister, Isabelle, has run away from countless boarding schools and it is while she is in Paris, having been expelled from the latest in the series, that the Germans invade France, and its inhabitants set out on the long trek to the south and centre of the country. While trying to get to her sister’s home in central France Isabelle meets Gaetan, a young man who helps her and with whom she falls in love.

But the events that take place in occupied France prevent them from forming a permanent relationship and it is initially as a courier for the Resistance and later in other, more dangerous, capacities, that Isabelle is occupied during the war years. Without wanting to give too much away, I will limit myself to saying that all the horrors of the war, the billeting of German soldiers in French homes, the barbarity of the Nazis’ treatment of civilians and military persons alike, the need to help downed Allied airmen escape to safety across the Pyrenees, the privations and denial of basic commodities to the local population are described in riveting – and sometimes harrowing – detail. Anyone who has read Caroline Moorhead’s book ‘A Train in Winter’ will not be surprised by the events described in the book, even though they still arouse horror and distress, especially in relation to characters fpr whom we have learned to care.

The fate of the Jews of France is also described in considerable detail, as seen through the eyes of the general population, and it is their reactions to these events that both thrill and sadden the reader. The book focuses to a great extent on the role played by women in enduring and combatting the occupation of France, and its conclusion, which recounts the belated recognition by the French authorities of their contribution, serves to provide some solace for the reader’s aching heart.