Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

once a week. For Jewish men whose businesses and social lives had become increasingly limited under the Nazis, the night out was a boon. Wednesday night bowling was their only source of recreation. On those evenings, the wives met in one of our homes. We gossiped and served home-baked cakes, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy. I counted on this time together with friends. It strengthened us and drew us closer to one another.

Throughout that year, all the talk was of emigration. Halle Jews were taking steps they would not have dreamed of only two years earlier. Friends were going to live in Cuba and South America. None could speak Spanish, and they knew nothing of life in Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia. Some women had never heard of the places they were moving to. “Mon-te-vee-de-o,” one of them said. “It has a nice ring…”

Sal’s friend, Rosenberg, paid two hundred fifty marks for a visa to Australia. “No, I don’t think it’s too far away. The further from Hitler the better,” he said. “With God’s help, we shall cope.” He would not have much money to make a new start. He was taking his capital out in spermarks.

When my father brought Edith to Halle for one of her periodic visits, he urged Sal to take some kind of step to get out of Germany. “Listen to me, Sal. You’re waiting too long. You can smuggle the money out of Germany. Other Jews are doing it. It’s not so hard. Come to Leipzig and talk to the furriers and jewelers. They will tell you how to do it.”

“It is not right,” Sal said.

“Right. What is right?” Papa asked with uncustomary exasperation. “Everybody is smuggling. Why do you have to be different? You’re too insulated and isolated here in Halle. You ought to hear what’s being said in Leipzig. Listen to men you know, men who can still travel, who have contacts. Then you will understand that time is running out.”

Sal took his advice and went to Leipzig. When he came home, he was more adamant that ever. “I heard everything, all about how they maneuver. They conceal, distort, misrepresent. I’m afraid to take these illegal steps.”

Doggedly, Sal continued in his efforts. He wrote to the Zionist Bureau, called Berlin, and visited the Bureau office, clinging to the hope that our number on the list for Palestine visas would be reached soon.

Sal’s customers started ringing the bell in the evening after he had closed the store. “We want to buy from you, but you see how it is,” they confided. “If all the Jews were like you, we would not have these difficulties.”

I did not see. I was incensed when Sal told me what his old customers said. “What do they mean, ‘If all the Jews were like you,’” I screamed. “Everyone is like you and like me. We are all the same. Why are they so blind? Why don’t they see that?”

“Mia, please, don’t shout. I suppose they can’t help it. They don’t agree with the Nazis. That’s all they are telling me.”

I was not mollified, and refused to answer the door in the evenings. “If people think they have to sneak around to speak to us, if they feel they can’t talk to me out in the open, I don’t want to see them.”

Early in 1938, the owner of the bowling alley received threats from the Nazis for accommodating Jews. The bowling group was disbanded. Then Halle’s Jewish department store owners were forced out of business with threats and intimidation. Sal’s profits declined, but individual stores like ours, Moritz’s, and those of our cousins, Padaver and Geminder, were left alone.

On the record of the Zionist Bureau for the Resettlement of German Jews, we had become number one to receive a capitalist visa to enter Palestine. We reached the top of the list, but we did not get a visa. The Bureau gave our visa to another family. And they kept doing it, again and again. By the summer, Sal was going to Berlin almost every week.

The Bureau officials always had the same answer. “Don’t worry. Your turn will come. We had to give preference to—” and they named a doctor or business executive in imminent danger. “It was a matter of life or death. Please understand. Really, it won’t be long, Herr Kanner. In the meantime, you are safe as long as you still have your store.”

We were worried and discouraged, but what recourse did we have? To whom could we protest?

“There is nothing to do but wait,” Sal said, “All the way back from Berlin during the three hour train ride, I wondered if waiting was the right thing. I weighed our options. If I were poor, like my brother-in-law, I would have gone. I’d have had nothing to lose. Or if I were rich, like the Leipzig furriers with their London customers, I could deposit money abroad. I’m not poor, and I’m not rich. And I have to plan ahead and follow the rules. That’s how I’ve always lived and prospered. I still believe in that. I just never thought when I filed the application at the end of 1934 that it would take so long.”

Our congregation was shrinking rapidly. Every week, we said goodbye to someone else. There were some lucky people with relatives in America who agreed to take financial responsibility for them. Such a guarantee was essential before the United States would grant a visa. Some went across the world in the other direction to Shanghai. To me, it was unimaginable that Jews could live in China, in a culture so alien to us. True, Shanghai was a free port with no visa requirements or bars to entry, but the long journey was risky. Many of the ships undertaking the long voyage were not seaworthy.

Jews were leaving Germany illegally in increasing numbers, without visas or passports. For a fee, they were smuggled across the border to Holland, Belgium or France. The smuggler always made it clear that he could not guarantee success, and some were caught. Of those who made it, some remained in Europe. Others headed for Mediterranean ports. They boarded all types of vessels, many not meant for anything but cruising down a quiet river or fishing in an inlet. A mile from the shores of Palestine, the passengers jumped or were lowered into the water. They had to wade ashore to avoid capture by British officials, who were always on the lookout for illegal immigrants.

I was more anxious than ever to get to the Holy Land. I wanted to participate with my family in building a homeland where Jews could live and pray together, in our ancient land given to us by God. But we would have to undertake a dangerous trek across fields to reach the German border. Then an even more dangerous ordeal awaited us: crossing that border. That ordeal would be followed by the effort to survive the sea after the ship discharged its illegal load a mile from shore. How could we even contemplate such a perilous journey with our three small children?

Markus shook his head sadly as Sal and I worried about reaching Palestine. The old man had found his answer. He immersed himself in his Gemara. The more oppressive the Nazi threats and restrictions became, the more he studied Torah and the more he prayed.