Not Welcome. Sue Everett
She saw people being humiliated and beaten; her uncle sustained a broken arm. Families saw their menfolk being forcibly removed and taken away in trucks. They later heard that they had been taken to prisons or ‘holding’ camps; twenty to thirty thousand Jews were arrested in this way and either released, if they had visas to leave the country, or deported to concentration camps. Those fortunate men who returned home were traumatised by their ordeal, their heads shaven, their bodies and minds physically and mentally ravaged. It became abundantly clear to all Jews that their survival was under threat. Daily life as they had known it had come to a standstill.
Many suicides followed these atrocities and it was this set of hopeless and diabolic circumstances that led Uncle Zion to his own desperate act of suicide on 16 November 1938. If there had previously been any doubt, this event was a blatant signal that the Jews had no future in Germany.
The events of Kristallnacht precipitated a sharp increase in the exodus of Jews from Nuremberg and throughout Germany. People were trying to find places of safety, first of all for their own children, then for themselves. Lutz’s parents were making preparations for the departure of their only son. Fortunately the Eichbaums had relatives in England who had left Nuremberg a few years earlier, Lutz’s paternal great-aunt Bertha and her son Hans. The Eichbaums were probably corresponding with these relatives and it was most likely that they were also planning for their own departure from Germany to the USA. The Nazi regime capitalised on this mass emigration by introducing ‘The Reich Flight Tax’ – a stringent property tax on émigrés, many of whom had to sell everything they owned to be able to leave their homeland.
Lutz was just sixteen at this time, and preparing to leave school. Jews were excluded from higher education and only unskilled jobs were considered appropriate by the Nazi regime. Employment prospects for Jewish children leaving school at that time were very limited; as a result many Jewish schoolchildren were already being sent abroad to complete their secondary and tertiary studies. In preparation for his new life, Lutz’s parents arranged private English tuition for him at home; he was a good student, which was just as well, as he was thrown into the deep end. His teacher couldn’t speak a word of German. By this time they would have been well advanced in their preparations for Lutz’s departure as they told him to be prepared for anything; they even gave him a tennis racquet which he packed in his luggage in the event he might use it in his future life.
In the meantime Lutz joined an import/export company owned by an acquaintance of his father. He worked in the packaging area, boxing up cigarette lighters and fountain pens. His employment was short-lived as just a few months after his sixteenth birthday his parents’ plans for his departure to England came to fruition.
Aunt Adele had recently become widowed and had already left Nuremberg, her eventual goal being to emigrate to the United States of America. She remained in Holland and Belgium en route, possibly staying with her paternal cousin Adolf in Brussels, living there for a couple of years until eventually reaching New York in August 1941.
Kindertransport
Soon after the horror of Kristallnacht there was an increased urgency for Jewish parents to evacuate their children from their homeland to a place of safety. Lutz, with only a few days to prepare for departure, left on 31 July 1939 on the Kindertransport, travelling by train to London via The Hague and across the North Sea to Harwich on a flat-bottomed passenger ferry. Lutz’ parents had registered with the program and had gained a trainee permit for their son, with a guarantee of free board and lodging by his father’s cousin in Westcliff-on-Sea. They waited in desperation for a seat to be allocated. This rescue operation was instigated by The Central British Fund for German Jewry and endorsed by the British Cabinet Committee on refugees, thereby creating a combined Commission for the Aid of Children, a force of Jewish and non-Jewish bodies working for refugees, which became the Refugee Children’s Movement (RCM). The first transport, which was established four months after Hitler came into power, left Berlin on 1 December 1938. Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Home Secretary, granted refugee status to threatened Jews and unaccompanied children seeking sanctuary in Britain; there was a much more sympathetic attitude towards Jews following the events of Kristallnacht. It is likely that Lutz’s parents heard about this scheme through word of mouth and that they paid for the ticket – they would only have had a few days’ notification of an available seat beforehand.
Before his departure Lutz went to the home of Eric Heilbronn, the rabbi’s son, to say farewell. As he left, the Rabbi laid his hands on Lutz’s head and blessed him and he felt reassured by this blessing. It must have been a sobering moment, the reality of his imminent departure into the unknown. The Rabbi’s words may have simply been ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He shine His light on you, and give you peace’. Tragically, Eric was killed in Italy on his first day in action with the United States army.
On that fateful day Lutz suffered through a tearful parting from his grandmother at home. His parents then took him to the station by tram, where they witnessed heart-rending scenes among the crowds of families gathered there. His mother was crying; he could tell his father was upset but trying not to reveal his feelings. Lutz expected to see others he knew at the station as his mother had told him of other families she knew who had made similar arrangements for their children. The train was already standing at the platform. Lutz noticed that there were many very young children – some only four or five years old. When they reached the platform it was very crowded and it was clear that every seat was accounted for.
They pushed their way along the platform looking for a carriage with a spare seat. The train was already quite full by the time it got to Nuremberg as many children had previously boarded in Vienna. Suddenly Lutz stopped as he saw someone he knew inside one of the carriages – it was Liesl Beck from the sports club; he turned to his parents and pointed her out to them. Having found a friend he reassured them that he would be all right. Liesl’s parents were standing beside the carriage window, and Lutz was relieved when they engaged in conversation with his parents, providing a welcome distraction from the emotional tension. Lutz wanted to get through the parting as quickly and as painlessly as possible, so giving his parents each a hug, he jumped up into the carriage beside Liesl, hoisting up his one suitcase beside him. He expected that they would meet again in England or in the United States of America, never imagining that this could be their last embrace. Liesl was equally pleased to see him and gave up her position by the window so that he could hear what his mother was shouting at him from the other side of the glass.
They weren’t at the station long before the train began to pull out, gradually increasing momentum. It was 10.30 a.m. Their parents, waving frantically, increased their pace as they tried to keep up with the moving train. Looking back towards the platform all Lutz could see was a sea of hands waving loving farewells to their vulnerable offspring. Lutz leaned out of the carriage window and yelled out encouraging final words to his parents who were gradually left behind as the train gathered steam and pulled out, away from their reach forever. The memory of this traumatic separation would haunt Lutz for the rest of his life.
The children’s carriages were attached to German trains and there were some German troops on the train as war was expected to be declared soon. Neither Lutz nor Liesl remember anyone being in charge, but all the younger children wore labels around their necks; they must have been the most precious cargo on board. Their eventual destination would be London, first travelling to the Hague on the Dutch coast.
Liesl remembers that she was wearing a tweed coat of blue-green wool dots and a hat with a turned-up brim; also that Lutz was wearing a beige ‘sports club’ windcheater. They both carried a small bag of possessions with one change of clothing – that was all they were permitted to take with them. In addition each child could take a maximum amount equivalent to ten shillings out of the country.
Liesl and Lutz negotiated with others in the carriage to sit opposite each other at the window where they practised their English on the way and talked about what England would be like. Liesl remembers that much of the landscape on the way to Holland was flat and open country. They tried opening the window but it was a steam train and soot blew in through the window, the grit irritating their eyes. When they ran out of enthusiasm for speech they both peered out of the grey wash of glass at the golden fields and rural scenes scrolling benignly past the window.