The Ritchie Boys: The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler. Bruce Henderson
Anti-Semitism grew ever more prevalent in the daily life of Josbach, and the local Jews became convinced that the Nazi regime had entrenched its power, with Hitler in full control as the supreme leader of Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, making Jews second-class citizens and revoking most of their political rights. Only Germans with four non-Jewish German grandparents were deemed “racially acceptable,” and Judaism was now defined as a race rather than a religion. It was irrelevant whether people practiced Judaism or were even practicing Christians; by law, if they possessed “Jewish blood,” they were Jews.
Guided by Third Reich dogma that encouraged “racially pure” women to bear as many Aryan children as possible, mixed marriages between Jews and persons with “German or related blood” were made a criminal offense. Hitler and his Nazi Party promulgated the notion that an enlarged, racially superior German population was destined to expand and rule by military force. One early step toward that goal—and the global conflict that would soon follow—took place in 1936, when Hitler sent German military forces to occupy the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone in western Germany established under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
In that same year, Manfred’s teacher, who kept a swastika pinned on the lapel of his jacket, herded all the students outside and lined them up like young military recruits along Josbach’s main street, where he told them a “special” motorcade was scheduled to pass through town. Some of the students eagerly pushed their way forward, but Manfred hung back. He had an idea it was going to be some Nazi-inspired demonstration, and he had no desire to be standing in front. Their wait wasn’t long. A black, open-roofed car approached at moderate speed. As they had practiced in school, upon the teacher’s command nearly all of the children snapped their right arms straight out.
“Sieg heil!” shouted a crescendo of high-pitched children’s voices.
Manfred did not raise his arm or his voice. He just stared at the mustachioed man in the backseat. He had seen his picture many times.
As the car passed, Hitler seemed to raise his hand to the side of his head in acknowledgment of the mass salute. Then he let it drop out of sight.
“Sieg heil! Sieg heil!”
The salutes ended only when the car turned a corner and was gone.
Young Manfred sensed that the mustachioed man in the black car meant danger to him, his family, and every Jew in Germany.
The day that two men in Nazi uniforms came to threaten his grandmother with arrest, she and Manfred were home alone. What crime could an old, sickly woman be guilty of? It seemed that Johanna Steinfeld held a first mortgage on a property in another town that these two men owned. But they had never made any payments and were thus greatly in arrears to her. Now they threatened the elderly woman with jail on a trumped-up charge if she didn’t agree to cancel the mortgage on the property. She went ashen. Turning to Manfred, she told him to run as fast as he could and bring back the mayor.
In 1930s Germany, a town’s Bürgermeister held a great deal of authority, even with outside officials. By then, the man who had once been Josbach’s first and only member of the Nazi Party, Heinrich Haupt, was serving as mayor. He was well liked by all, and even got together with some Jewish friends on Saturday nights to play Skat, the most popular card game in Germany.
Haupt hurried back to the house with Manfred and immediately asked to see the men’s credentials, which they showed him. But when he demanded to see a court-issued arrest warrant, the men admitted they did not have one.
“You have no jurisdiction here,” Haupt said sternly. “Mrs. Steinfeld is a citizen of this town, and your attempt to arrest her is totally unfounded.”
With that, Mayor Haupt kicked the uniformed men out of town.
For the Jews of Josbach, even their traditional Saturday morning stroll to the synagogue in neighboring Halsdorf had become unsafe. Whenever a flour-mill operator saw them approaching, he released his guard dogs with the command: “Los, fass die Juden!” (Go, get the Jews!) After several incidents, the procession of well-dressed men, women, and children started taking the long way around to bypass the mill.
Military convoys rattled through town almost daily. Once, a group of SA brownshirts stopped and began chanting, “When Jewish blood flows from the knife, that time will be so much better!” A pack of Hitler Youth rode through town on bikes, stoning stores with Jewish names and smashing windows. Even longtime customers were afraid to be seen patronizing Josbach’s Jewish merchants.
In 1937, Paula Steinfeld decided it was time to get her family out of Germany. Several Kattens had already left, including Arthur and his wife; after Arthur’s arrest, they had left to join their married daughter, who had settled in New York in the 1920s. Having come to the realization that Germany held no future for Jews of any age, and no matter their background, other Kattens and Steinfelds, including Uncle Solomon, were taking steps to emigrate.
By then, a backlog of Germans—most of them Jews—seeking entry into the United States had begun to form. Under the Immigration Act of 1924, the U.S. State Department was authorized to issue 150,000 immigrant visas annually, subject to quotas assigned to a country in proportion to its contribution to the U.S. population in 1890. As such, 85 percent of immigrants admitted came from Europe. Quotas were based on birthplace, not citizenship or place of residency. By 1937, when Paula decided to get her family out of the country, Nazi Germany was still open to the idea of Jewish emigration, but the annual quota of 27,270 Germans and Austrians allowed into the United States was filled rapidly.
Given the emigration numbers, Paula was told that the family would go on a waiting list for U.S. visas, but they might not make it to America until 1940 or 1941. There was also the difficulty of finding someone to sign an affidavit of support for a widow with three children. None of the relatives who had made it to America were in a position to accept financial responsibility for the family.
A desperate Paula resolved to get her children to safety, even if it meant doing the unfathomable: sending each one to a different foreign country, alone. In Jewish tradition, her oldest son was expected to carry on the family name, which meant Manfred would leave first. Information about emigration was flowing freely in Jewish communities, and Paula heard about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an organization based in the United States that helped unaccompanied children under sixteen get out of Germany. Due to increased demand, and in the interest of fairness, the group accepted only one child per family. When she signed up Manfred he was just shy of fourteen.
A deluge of paperwork followed: five copies of his visa application; two copies of his birth certificate; a certificate of good conduct from German authorities (which became increasingly difficult for Jews to acquire from Nazi officials and was eventually eliminated from U.S. immigration requirements); proof of good health from a physician; and signed documents from HIAS as well as from Paula’s sister, Minna, and her husband, Morris Rosenbusch, who had left Germany in 1936 and were living on Chicago’s South Side. They had agreed to take Manfred, who knew little English, into their home.
In June 1938, Manfred’s U.S. visa came through, and an early-July departure date was set. He was to take a train to Hamburg, a major port city in northern Germany, which connected to the North Sea by the Elbe River. An HIAS escort would meet him there, and he would join other German Jewish children aboard an ocean liner for the trip across the Atlantic to America.
As part of an agonizing round of farewells, Manfred bicycled fifteen miles to visit his grandmother’s brother. Manfred had an idea this would be the last time they would see each other, and his elderly granduncle seemed to share his feelings. As they said good-bye, the old man reached into his pocket and took out a crinkled U.S. ten-dollar bill that he carefully smoothed out and handed to the boy. “To help you start a new life in America,” he said.
Paula had been warned that Manfred could bring very little cash with him, so she sewed the bill into the cuff of a pair of his pants. Other Jewish families who had sent loved ones abroad gave her another idea. She purchased two seventy-five-dollar Leica camera lenses and placed each one at the bottom of a talcum-powder can, covering