Chapter 2: Anshel and Rifka

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was an Age of Reason. It was an Age of Insanity. Into this world, two Jewish kids were married in central Berlin’s Scheunenviertel borough because a matchmaker thought they would be a good fit for each other. The bride’s father and mother came to the groom’s family bakery to approve of the match. The bride and groom had never met before the wedding day, for her family had just moved to Berlin from Württemberg to take a job at Humboldt University as a Professor of Chemistry. He met Professor Albert Einstein, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. In the Jewish neighborhood of Berlin, they took their vows under the canopy, surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors. Anshel brought his bride to his family’s apartment with five small bedrooms above their Kosher bakery. His mother welcomed her daughter-in-law into their home. Anshel worked during the day at the Pfeiffer Family Bakery downstairs and at night performed in the Yiddish Theater down the street. His picture appeared in the Yiddish newspapers when he played the leading actor role. His theater posters hung in the bakery. His elder brother Binyamin was the bookkeeper and made deliveries. As the family recovered from the hyperinflation of 1923, which was so bad, there was a failed coup d’etat at a beer hall in Munich, and Nazi conspirators went to jail for treason; they purchased a six-cylinder delivery truck. Now that the economy stabilized with new currency backed by gold, it allowed the means for seventeen-year-old Anshel to marry fifteen-year-old Rifka in the spring of 1927. Her family regularly invited his family to picnic at their house near the university. He had an older brother, Binyamin, sister-in-law Sarah, niece Talia, nephew Avram, and a younger sister Miriam living with his parents. When his father saved enough profits, he purchased an automobile with a rumble seat for the family. His niece Talia was taking ballet lessons with a retired vaudeville actress in her cellar. His nephew Avram was enrolled in Hebrew School and dreamed of working in the bakery when he grew up. They all played the piano and sang. Anshel also played the accordion at parties. Anshel enjoyed turning on their new radio to listen to American jazz and Josephine Baker touring Europe after the release of her French silent film “Siren of the Tropics”. Rifka enjoyed singing in Yiddish and helped her mother-in-law keep the apartment in good order. The children attended the local public school.

The meals were strictly Kosher, and the Sabbath traditions were strictly followed every week without fail. Soon the couple was blessed with a son the next year, to name him Herschel. Life was good. Anshel’s picture was in the Yiddish newspaper, portraying Siegfried, who slayed a dragon and was then murdered in Wagner’s opera. His co-star playing the love interest Brünnhilde wore a long blonde wig and knelt next to him in the photograph. Practically every lady had bobbed their hair in the American flapper fashion and wore shorter skirts with cloche hats. Anshel took his wife to the cinema to watch German and American movies, cafes to hear jazz musicians play, and the Yiddish theater where he acted. As little Herschel grew and began to walk, the American stock market crashed and shook the world. Many American companies invested in German industry pulled out their money. Businesses closed, loans defaulted, and soon banks went out of business, taking depositors’ life savings. Foreign trade collapsed when retaliatory tariffs were enacted. Unemployment rose in the cities. Mines in the mountains were closed. Germany's fledging republic government out of the Great War barely ten years old was in crisis, and the people prayed for a hero to save them. Anshel’s sister Miriam married an accountant for a hotel and moved in with her in-laws. Rifka gave birth to a girl named Chavalah. The 1930 elections resulted in an obscure political party that was banned after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, called the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or shortened to the Nazi Party, gained the second-greatest number of seats in the Reichstag legislature. Social Democratic Party of Germany won the majority of the seats. In this crisis, President Hindenburg ruled by emergency decree. He appointed Heinrich Brüning as chancellor. The family bakery struggled to obtain supplies and fulfil orders as businesses closed. Anshel supported the family by acting in the theater and taking odd jobs in cabarets and cafes to perform before smaller audiences. Jewish cafés loved his accordion playing. He even sang, played the piano, and played the accordion on the radio during music program broadcasts. Whenever he performed at the Yiddish Theater, he was mobbed by fans wanting his autograph. Humbled by such devotion, he signed every autograph request. Rifka began working in the Jewish Hospital laundry and learned nursing to earn more money for the family. Her sister-in-law Sarah gave birth to a son named Yussel.

The Great Depression, as it was beginning to be called, did not improve. In 1931, Germany had a banking crisis when a bank in Vienna collapsed, and investors withdrew their money from Germany. American President Hoover called for a moratorium on reparation payments to France to relieve some financial stress on Germany as American and English banks sent funds to Germany. In the elections of 1932, an Austrian named Adolf Hitler ran for president against President Hindenburg as leader of the popular Nazi Party. His speeches stirred a crowd full of fire against the Jews, who caused all their problems with their money and greedy capitalism. How typical, dating back to the days of the Black Death’s bubonic plague, everything bad that happened in Europe was always the Jews' fault. How did Jews cause the New York Stock Exchange crash, retaliatory tariffs, or bank runs? Jews were harmed just as much as Gentiles around the world. Hitler’s campaign slogan was “Hitler over Germany.” Rifka was confused about what that slogan meant. Lacking German citizenship, Hitler technically was not allowed to run for president, but a Nazi member appointed him to a post in the civil service to make him a German citizen. How nice of him. In the Reichstag, the Nazi Party won the majority of seats, followed closely by the Social Democratic Party. President Hindenburg remained in office and appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor. He was so unpopular that he was replaced by General Kurt von Schleicher in December. This new chancellor promised public works projects to give jobs to the unemployed by July 1933.

Rifka gave birth to a boy named Fievel just before Hanukkah. Herschel had begun Hebrew school to learn about the Maccabees Revolt and the lamp oil that lasted eight days, which they would celebrate as Hanukkah. Chavalah had begun taking ballet classes with her cousin and preparing for a recital. They would walk to their classes with their older cousins who were aged eleven and nine. Talia was learning to wear pointe shoes in the hope of performing with her uncle in the Yiddish Theater someday. Avram was learning multiplication tables at his public school and studied the Tanakh in Hebrew School. The economy was struggling with high unemployment, but recovery was on the horizon. In America, a new president who offered a New Deal was elected and would be in office the next year. The Germans wished they could get a New Deal to recover from this never-ending Depression. Anshel’s sister-in-law Sarah became pregnant again, and the New Year 1933 was entered with the enthusiasm of another mouth to feed. Many women in Germany were delaying having children until the Depression was over. Even Roman Catholic women were ceasing to have children until they could better care for them. The Pfeiffer family prayed to God to give them strength to survive these terrible times, as they survived the Great War and the 1923 hyperinflation. They clung to their faith that God would provide for them and watch over them as the economy would get better and become prosperous once again. Sarah had a miscarriage. The Jewish doctor said she had anemia.

Then General Kurt von Schleicher was no longer chancellor, and Franz von Papen convinced President Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933, making Franz von Papen the Vice-Chancellor. The crowds came to see Chancellor Hitler take residence in the Reich Chancellery. The Pfeiffer family joined the crowd to see this man with his tongue of fire in his speeches against them as Jewish people. Chancellor Hitler stood at an open window gazing at the cheering crowds. A month later, the Reichstag Building was set on fire by a Dutch Communist in an attempt to rally German workers against fascist rule. President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree soon after and suspended basic rights to allow detention without trial. This resulted in the German Communist Party being suppressed, and four thousand members were arrested. The Reichstag was forced to gather at the Kroll Opera House, with Nazi paramilitary SA Brownshirts standing by as guards. The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave Chancellor Hitler's cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years. Along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, Chancellor Hitler and his cabinet were given legal absolute power over Germany. Everything in Germany would never be the same again. Professor Albert Einstein, who was visiting American universities in February 1933, decided not to return to Germany once he heard his apartment in Berlin and cottage were ransacked, and then his personal sailboat was taken by the Nazis. He surrendered his German passport in Antwerp, Belgium, on his return journey to Germany. At the German consulate, he renounced his German citizenship. At first, the renunciation was refused, but later the next year, the Nazis revoked his passport. He also resigned from the Prussian Academy of Science before he could be expelled.

In April, Jewish boycotts began in Germany, and a new law was enacted that all non-Aryan people and Communists were no longer allowed to hold positions in the civil service, schools, legal professions, and universities. Aryan was the new label for the German people descended from the Volk. The definition of non-Aryan was having a parent or grandparent belonging to the Jewish, Gypsy/Roma, African, or Asian Races. All persons in the civil service would have to be able to produce the Ariernachweis (proof of Aryan ancestry) in order to prove that they had no ancestors of the Jewish race. In May, Un-Aryan books, written by Jews (especially Einstein), liberals, and leftists, were publicly burned in front of the opera house in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels proclaimed, "Jewish intellectualism is dead" in newspapers. An English scientist was sent to Germany at the request of Professor Einstein, living with Parliament Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson in England, after an audience with Prime Minister Lloyd George to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in English universities. Rifka’s father, losing his university professorship, made plans to leave Germany. He was given a professorship at the University of London. Professor Einstein further contacted other countries to accept Jewish scientists and find placements at universities. Turkey took in a thousand Jewish scientists. Rifka’s father encouraged her to immigrate to London, but immigration quotas, the prejudice against poor or Eastern European Jews, and no provisions for refugees prevented the family from fleeing to London together. In July, Naturalized Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe fleeing the Bolsheviks taking control of Russia, lost their citizenship and were forcibly deported. Many German towns put up signs forbidding Jews to enter. Jewish businesses were forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and they were deprived of bidding on government contracts. In November, another law inflicted on habitual criminals was that they were to be forcibly sterilized and sent to concentration camps as antisocial people such as the chronically unemployed, prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics, homeless vagrants, people of African descent, and Gypsies/Roma.

A Kosher Baker was not as highly valued as a scientist was to immigration agents. The family clung to their faith that God was watching over them, and they would rejoice when this government will get overthrown like the last one they endured after the Great War. Their ancestors survived Egyptian slavery and the Wilderness, Babylonian slavery, the Roman Empire’s Jewish Revolts, the Jewish massacres during the Black Death and Crusades, and they could survive this Great Depression and Nazi government, as people were calling it. If they followed the Jewish rules and new Nazi laws, they would survive to enjoy happy days again. Yussel began Hebrew School. The wealthier Jews began to leave for Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Palestine, Great Britain, Switzerland, and the Americas. As Jews left, the bakery sales declined. For many lower middle-class and poor Jews, it was an arduous process to immigrate to another country. One had to possess a passport, medical clearance, birth certificate, tax documents, military discharge, police certificate, and/or inventory list. Every country had different laws on immigration. Then one had to sit on a waiting list for interviews at consulates to obtain a visa for the destination country. The more Jews wanted to leave, the longer the waitlist became. Many countries had quotas for each country allowed to immigrate, intelligence tests to reject immigrants, rejected people with disabilities, and some refused Jews outright. One had to prove they had the means to support themselves, going against the German law requiring Jews to remit up to ninety per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country.

Many had to wait two years for an interview at a consulate and renew their expiring documents, including visas from the countries they would be traveling through to get to their destination country. Many civil servants looked for excuses to reject visa applicants. If they were permitted a visa, they then had to pack and buy transportation tickets to their destination. Many went to Switzerland first before going to another country that initially allowed entry to political refugees, while immigrants were given temporary residence permits. Many refugees, particularly Jews, were permitted to enter, but the government also began distinguishing between refugees and immigrants to control numbers, called quotas. Many left for Palestine under the control of the British. Other countries in Europe, like Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, welcomed the Jewish refugees at first, but as more laws and restrictions were enacted, causing more Jews to seek a way out of Germany, the borders began to shrink until more Jewish refugees were unwanted by their host countries. For many Jews, by the time they realized they needed to leave Germany for their own safety, they were trapped.

The Pfeiffer Family Bakery survived the best they could. They continued life as usual as was possible. The daughter, Miriam, who married an accountant, obtained visas for her family to go to Sweden, hoping to eventually reach America, where her husband’s uncle lived in New York City’s Lower East Side. The uncle said they had a Yiddish Theater in their neighborhood. In Berlin, the Nazis painted a Star of David with the words Jude on their bakery windows. Gentiles did not come to the bakery much anyway. At the Nuremberg Rally of September 1935, Hitler gave a speech introducing new laws to the Reichstag. There was the Reich Citizenship Law, approved by the Reichstag on November 14, 1935, and immediately went into effect, under which a Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood and proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich. Reich citizenship was granted by the Minister of the Interior to present Reich citizenship certificates. Under the new law, the Reich citizens have full political rights. The remainder of the population of political opponents, Jews, Gypsies/Roma, and other undesirables were stripped of their legal rights, could no longer vote, and their citizenship was to be classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. In December, Jewish veterans in state-regulated professions such as medicine and education were dismissed. Soon, employers were authorized to include in their policies an Aryan paragraph excluding Jews from employment. The other law mentioned was the Law for Protection of German Blood and Honor that went into effect on January 1, 1936, which banned Jews from marrying Aryans, banned extramarital relations between Jews and Aryans, and stated that Jews may not employ female subjects of Germany or related blood who are under 45 years old. Jews were forbidden to fly the Reich or national flag or display Reich colors. They were, on the other hand, allowed to display their Jewish colors. Any person violating the new Nuremberg Laws was arrested and sentenced to hard labor in a concentration camp. Communists and Roman Catholics objected to the new laws, but the majority of German people accepted them to avoid the risk of being arrested by the Gestapo. Because of the Berlin Olympics in August 1936, the Ministry of Interior did not actively enforce the new laws until the Olympics were complete.

Wholesalers who sold to Jews were paraded through the streets with placards of their crime. Many Jewish businesses closed as people left Germany. The Nazi government was quick to confiscate the property left behind by the traitors of the country. Sarah decided to join Rifka in the Jewish Hospital, working in the laundry while their mother-in-law watched the children to complete household chores. Little Fievel grew old enough to begin attending Hebrew school. The Yiddish Theater continued with Stars of David, with Jude painted in the center of the windows and smaller audiences. It was trying times for the Berlin Jews. German beggars, thieves, communists, Catholic clergy who spoke against Hitler, and prostitutes were being rounded up in the streets and transported to concentration camps for the crime of being antisocial criminals. The Olympics came, and Berlin was ready for all the athletes, reporters with cameras, and important dignitaries.

The Pfeiffer family got tickets to the opening ceremony and the equestrian events. Jews and Gypsies/Roma were banned from joining German teams. Germany won the most medals, promoting the German Race as superior, followed by America. They discovered they could watch events on television screens set up in rooms. They had never heard of such a fascinating invention sending newsreels through the air like radio signals. They did a new torch relay from Athens across Europe to Berlin. New sports competitions for basketball, canoeing, and field handball were introduced. The American Jesse Owens won four gold medals, and Hitler, presenting the medals, refused to shake his hand. Another American, Marjorie Gestring, a 13-year-old diver, became the youngest female to win a gold medal. Inge Sorensen, a 12-year-old Danish swimmer, became the youngest individual medalist, winning the bronze. German gymnasts Konrad Frey and Alfred Schwarzmann won triple gold medals. The German equestrian team won all six gold medals, and the Pfieffer family cheered. Italy won the gold medal in football, and they knew what Mussolini had to say about that accomplishment and how the fascist system works well. Hitler met his hero Mussolini when he first came to power and was awestruck in his presence. As the German army invaded most of Europe, many Jewish athletes who competed in the Berlin Olympics representing countries across Europe were later killed in concentration camps. The German wrestler Werner Seelenbinder was a committed communist, and the Nazi government permitted him to compete to help them win an Olympic medal. He failed to medal and was later killed in a concentration camp.

As Jews left Berlin, Talia and Chavalah’s ballet teacher closed her ballet school and left. Jewish actors and actresses in the Yiddish Theater left. Jewish teachers dismissed from their positions left. Rifka questioned whether they should try to migrate to England, where her father was located. The diminishing profits and automobile expenses resulted in not enough savings to get all the paperwork for the whole family and then waiting for an interview at the consulate. Her father-in-law Asher clung to the hope that this too shall pass, God will provide, God was watching over them, and happy days would come again. He was full of pride and honor being Jewish, and nobody could ever shake his faith. Not even the Nazis. Rifka soon announced during Hanukkah that she was pregnant, and the next year gave birth to a girl named Raziel. By 1938, half the Jews in Berlin fled Germany.