A Chance to Live. A Family s Journey to Freedom. Pieter Kohnstam

Transcription

1 A Chance to Live A Family s Journey to Freedom Pieter Kohnstam Bardolf & Company Sarasota 2006

2 Published by Bardolf & Company A Chance to Live ISBN Copyright 2006 Pieter Kohnstam All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information write: Bardolf & Company 5430 Colewood Pl. Sarasota, FL Printed in the United States of America Cover Design by David Kohnstam Maps by Shaw Creative Cover photo by Barbara Banks Pieter Kohnstam acknowledges his debt to Chris Angermann who helped him write this book

3 To my parents, Hans and Ruth, for their courage and heroism and to my wife Susan for her support and tenacity in helping me complete this story

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5 CONTENTS Maps 7 Introduction 11 MY FATHER S STORY 17 Germany 19 Amsterdam 27 Pieter and Anne 31 The Nazi Invasion 37 The Occupation 42 Deportation Orders 52 Fleeing Amsterdam 59 First Border Crossing 65 A Fateful Meeting 73 Visit to a Cemetery 81 A Special Meal 84 Our Night in Paris 88 A Surprising Meeting 93 Narrow Escape 98 The River Crossing 103 Chateâuroux 110 Wine Harvest 114 George 118 Valençay 131 Madame Bouchardy 137

6 Narrow Escape 147 A Dangerous Detour 152 Perpignan 159 Operation Jump 166 To Barcelona 172 Caught 177 In Limbo 187 Barcelona Spring 193 Ruth s Ordeal 203 The Bishop 209 Across the Atlantic 216 Buenos Aires 224 Afterword 230 Appendix 237 Acknowledgments 238 Picture Pages

7 MAPS

8 8 EUROPE FRANCE GERMANY POLAND SPAIN GURS BARCELONA MEDITERRANEAN SEA PORTUGAL ITALY NORTH SEA AMSTERDAM ANTWERP LILLE PARIS MAASTRICHT CHATEAUROUX LYON PERPIGNAN The Kohnstam s journey from Amsterdam to Barcelona

9 9 CURACAO TRINIDAD & TOBAGO PORT OF SPAIN CARACAS VENEZUELA PARAMARIBO ATLANTIC OCEAN SOUTH AMERICA RECIFE BRAZIL RIO DE JANEIRO SANTOS ARGENTINA BUENOS AIRES RIO DE LA PLATA NOTE: No records could be obtained as to which Ports of Call the ship made. Ports mentioned herein were obtained from the list of the shipping agents. From Port of Spain to Buenos Aires

10 I have survived. And as a survivor I am a witness. If this survival, of the horrors that are summoned up today in the term Holocaust, is to have any purpose, then it is above all that of keeping awake the memory of the unimaginable, to prevent forgetting and repression and to build all this into the vision of a better future, where such things or anything like them can never happen again anywhere in this world. Simon Wiesenthal

11 INTRODUCTION individual decision can alter the course one s life irrevocably. When I was six years old, my parents and I lived in Amsterdam under the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. Our apartment at Merwedeplein 17 happened to be downstairs from the Frank family Otto, Edith, Margo and Anne. As neighbors we were compatible because both Germany. The youngest daughter, Anne, whose diary later became world famous, was my babysitter and playmate. tragedies lay ahead; and, although life under the Nazi occupation was often traumatic, Anne and I spent many joyful hours together. outside, our families drew closer, their bond cemented by frequent games of bridge in the Franks apartment, which was larger than ours. our parents spoke in German and our fathers puffed on cigars. While I could not understand their conversations at the time as a child I spoke only Dutch I remember that their tone often turned serious. From hindsight, I now know that they talked about the war raging in Europe and what to do if the situation got worse. And it did get worse. When conditions became impossible, the Franks decided to hide in the annex which Otto Frank had secretly

12 12 A Chance to Live over quickly and that life would return to normal. They asked my parents to join them; but for a number of reasons my parents did not It was a momentous decision at the time, and, in retrospect, it saved our lives. The Frank family perished in Hitler s concentration camps. Only Otto Frank survived. My parents and I went on a desperate trek across Europe to escape Nazi persecution. We made it to safety with luck and determination, and because many men and women both Jewish and Christian helped us. Without their generosity and heroism, I would not be alive today. For many years, I kept quiet about my experiences. I was content to live in the United States and to pursue the American Dream of freedom and prosperity for my children. Only my immediate family was aware of what had happened to me. But during the fall of 1980 when we were living in Monmouth County, New Jersey, another one of those life changing events occurred. The morning after Halloween, I stepped outside our house and discovered that our car and driveway had been spray-painted with swastikas. I was stunned. Once again the ugly specter of intolerance had been visited upon my life. Shaken and upset, I felt personally assaulted. But when I found out that the house of the rabbi of our synagogue had also been desecrated, my initial reactions turned to anger. I realized I could no longer sit quietly in the face of prejudice and persecution. I had to do something. I decided to become active in the community, speaking out against anti-semitism and encouraging the building of bridges between Judaism and other faiths. In the process, it became inevitable that I would tell my story. To my surprise, whenever I shared my forty-year-old memories, people were astonished and deeply moved. Many encouraged me to go on so that others could hear about what

13 Introduction 13 had happened to me. More people should know about this was a frequent response. My wife Susan was chief among those who were urging me to keep talking about what had happened to me and my family. Five years earlier, I had asked my father, who had returned to Germany and lived in Munich at the time, to write an account of our so that future generations would know our family history. My own recollections, being the memories of a six-year-old, were sketchy and haphazard at best. I knew my father would remember more, including dates and a coherent chronology of what had happened to us. It took me two years to convince him to put pen to paper. At the time we agreed that the account would only cover our did not mention any historical names and events that were not directly involved in our journey; and he refused to include the names of people misfortune. Looking back now, I wish he had. But my father was not a vindictive man. He had reestablished a comfortable existence in Germany, and was doing exactly what he wanted, painting and creating art. He was not interested in stirring up controversy, preferring to live out his life on his own terms without having to answer to public scrutiny. He wrote his account in German, and it took him a full year. My mother was a different story. When I was a teenager, she was often surprised that I remembered incidents and names from our journey so well. But when I wanted to learn more about what had happened to us, she was less forthcoming. Once, when were living in Argentina, she and my stepfather asked me what I wanted for my birthday; and I said I would like my mother to write her version of the actual story of our escape. My stepfather got upset and shouted, You have no right to judge your parents or put them on the witness

14 14 A Chance to Live stand. I had struck a nerve. I thought that perhaps my mother was embarrassed to reveal certain details and wanted to spare her new family, including my half brother, the knowledge of what she had gone through to survive. Around the time my father started to write his memoir, I asked her again, and this time she agreed; but while she expressed an interest in my father s progress, asking me from time to time what he had written, she did not commit anything to paper herself. Perhaps she really was too busy my mother always lived whirlwind-like with numerous projects swirling around her but I suspect she was still protecting herself, her husband and her children. After my father and stepfather died, however, she apparently became more willing to open up and talk about her experiences. Following her death, I found among her papers an interview she had given for the newsletter of an Argentine Jewish organization that described in considerable detail some of the Over the next 20 years, I told the story of our escape on various public occasions. But it was not until September, 2002, when I retired to Florida that I decided to translate my mother s and father s written memoirs into English and integrate them into a coherent account of a sense of urgency and additional motivation. The desecration of several Jewish homes in a nearby neighborhood and news reports about people with respected academic credentials denying that the Holocaust had ever taken place, made me very angry. I realized that I had to do something, that it was time to speak out once again. After all, I am living proof that the Holocaust happened. When I started to translate my mother and father s recollections, I had no idea how deeply the process would stir my own memories. Experiences that I had long forgotten came back to me in vivid detail. I would wake up in the middle of the night remembering a fact, a name, an incident; and I would not be able to get back to sleep until I had gotten up and written about it. I decided to include things I had never

15 Introduction 15 spoken about to anyone, including my wife. Some were embarrassing; others left me with feelings of anguish and shame. There were times when I had to stop writing as my emotions overwhelmed me and I started to cry. There were also many instances where I could not agonizing process and, without the encouragement of others, I don t think I would have accomplished it. As it is, it took me the better part events with me for over six decades. As the story was evolving, it acquired legs, so to speak. My wife and I took several trips to Europe revisiting places and retracing some of the steps of the route my parents and I had taken sixty years earlier. I scoured libraries, archives, foundations and museums and learned to do research on the Internet to verify that the details of my parents and my own memories agreed with historical facts and reality. Through the sister of my daughter s husband, I met a writer, Chris Angermann, who helped me edit the text. Although I have lived and language after Dutch, French, German and Spanish and I was glad for his assistance. He suggested adding some historical background and context for clarity, and, as a result of his probing questions, I continued to recall additional important memories. Because my father s narrative made up the bulk of information, I decided to let the story unfold from his point of view, incorporating my mother s recollections and my own memories where appropriate. What follows, then, is the account of our journey to freedom as told by my father, Hans Kohnstam. I offer this chronicle of our family s survival during a time of persecution, when people were killed simply because of their religious backgrounds and beliefs, in the hope that it can be a small stepping stone to a better world in which people strive to live together in greater peace and harmony. I believe that offering alternatives to intolerance and prejudice is especially important at a time when fundamentalist religious zealots

16 16 A Chance to Live and terrorists are determined to eradicate the freedoms we hold dear in many corners of the globe. Fortunately, along with troubling signs of growing persecution and fanaticism, I also see many positive developments, such as the rise of interfaith dialogue; and I hope that this story can, even if in a small way, inspire the dreams and struggles for greater freedom and tolerance. If it manages to do so at all, the countless victims of the Holocaust who were destroyed in the Nazi death camps and the have perished in vain. Pieter Kohnstam Venice, Florida October 2006

17 MY FATHER S STORY

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19 Germany M y name is Hans Kohnstam. Over forty years have passed tained many events down to the smallest details. I can see pictures al, nightmarish existence. It was like going from the idyllic vision of Hieronymus Bosch s The Garden of Worldly Delights to his harrowing panel of hellish torments and cruelty. So many people had their lives uprooted and destroyed when Adolf Hitler came to power, and, like many of them, I was utterly unprepared when gathering storm clouds. Yes, there were Nazi party annual rallies - after Hitler s appointment as Reichs Chancellor, laws were passed

20 20 A Chance to Live - affairs and gave it no more thought than the changing weather. would come crashing down. I grew up in the scenic town of Fuerth in Northern Bavaria in gardens. My father, Willy Kohnstam, owned a large toy manufac- is mentioned in the Bavarian Historical Monuments Register. To- retail merchandizing company, and there are no signs that we ever - - Although not the largest toy manufacturer in Germany, - (after Moses Kohnstam). During the 1950s, Moko merchandized the popular Match Box cars. The name M. Kohnstam & Co. was