Born January 24, 1927, Berlin, Germany
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“The roof tiles are here, take your places on the steps.” Oh not again we thought; why all this nonsense? We work all day to get the heavy brick tiles up to the roof of the apartment building, and tomorrow morning, after an air raid, they probably will all be in small pieces on the ground. But we had to do it.
This time I got a place on the steps between the third and fourth floor, and soon it began. Grab two tiles from the fellow below you, turn half a circle and pass them to the next in line. Grab, turn, pass; grab, turn, pass. So it went for hours and hours ad infinitum. We started to sing: “tedium, tedium you my great pleasure, tedium, tedium you my great joy; were there no tedium there would be no pleasure, were there no tedium there would be no joy.” Once in a while one of us had to leave for a short time creating a gap in the line, but this hardly affected our rhythm. Those next to the gap simply had to take a few steps when receiving or passing the tiles. To carry on a coherent conversation was next to impossible, since one constantly had to swivel from side to side.
Some of the older ones among us imagined what they would like to eat after the war and began to recite elaborate menus. Ragout fin, tenderloin Chateaubriand, beef Wellington; we younger ones had never even heard of such dishes. Our minds were set more on generous portions of things like hamburgers, fried potatoes, or macaroni and cheese. And the various varieties of wines that were mentioned were complete enigmas to us. The only wine we had tasted so far was the ones used for Sabbath and holiday blessings.
Through all the tedium you had to be alert, since you did not want to drop the tiles on your toes and certainly not on the toes of the ones next to you. At times work was interrupted by an air raid warning, followed about half of the time by an actual air raid. We rushed down to the basement hoping -- it seems almost grotesque in retrospect -- that some bombs falling into the neighborhood would undo everything we had just accomplished.
Passing of roof tiles, while certainly mind-numbing, was actually not a bad assignment. Thanks to a decent overseer -- a petty criminal before the war -- the pace was sensible, and the work as such was physically less demanding and far less dangerous than some of the other tasks we had performed.
©2002, Fritz Gluckstein. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
Berlin fall 1944, the Americans and British are approaching the Rhine, and the Russians are on German soil. Our group of Jewish husbands and sons of mixed marriages was doing its usual work, demolishing ruins and cleaning up after air raids, when suddenly we were “detached to special duty.” The special duty meant laying the foundation of a building complex for a “new Berlin” to be completed after the final victory. Actually this was not an unwelcome change, since for once we were building rather than tearing down. But after two weeks our building experience came to a permanent end -- we were detached again; this time to the southern outskirts of the city to set up antitank obstacles protecting a bridge over the Teltow canal.
At the new work site we were greeted by a large sign; it read “An die Arbeit Schanzer, Tod dem Soviet Panzer,” in English meaning something like, “On to work, no shirking; death to the Soviet Panzers lurking.” We dug trenches and sank iron beams halfway into the ground in a 45-degree angle. About midnight we were loaded into a moving van and transported to a social hall for some soup. An hour later we had the almost nightly air raid warning and marched to a nearby shelter. We did not stay very long; this time the bombs fell into the northern part of the city. At noon the next day we were told that enough had been accomplished to stop the Russian tanks.
Before leaving we looked at our handiwork and wondered how long it would hold up the tanks -- 31 minutes we decided. The tanks would come to the obstacles, stop, their crews would laugh for 30 minutes and then it would take them one minutes to get through. Actually that is probably pretty close to what happened. Marshal Koniev’s forces entered the city so fast that no effective resistance could be mounted, and fanatic Nazis had no time “to get” the remaining Jews. I feel that my fellow-workers and I had a tiny part in the liberation of Berlin -- we did not do a very good job with those antitank obstacles.
©2002, Fritz Gluckstein. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
In April 1945, the demolition crew to which my father and I belonged was working near an SS facility when a line of military trucks moved slowly down the street, pushed—we hardly could believe our eyes—by a group of SS men. It was an exhilarating sight, pure unalloyed schadenfreude. Surely, if even the SS nolonger had gasoline, the demise of the Third Reich could not be far off. “Look at this,” a fellow worker said, “It’s getting on toward Ne’ilah,” referring to the final prayer service of the Day of Atonement.
Soon the sound of artillery fire could be heard, first in the eastern part of the city and then in all of Berlin. Public transportation ceased to function, keeping people from going to work, and artillery shells were hitting buildings or were exploding in the streets. But Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, did not give up. He managed to distribute a tabloid-size sheet of greenish paper called the Panzer Baer—alluding to the bear in Berlin’s coat of arms—which proclaimed in large letters: “At the gates of Berlin the enemy will meet his doom, just as Napoleon at the gates of Moscow. Be assured the inferior Russian soldiers are no match for our heroic fighting force.”
My parents and I were living in the western part of Berlin, sharing an apartment with two intermarried couples. We slept fully dressed on blanket-covered beds. Whenever the shelling became too intense, we went down to the cellar, often four or five times during 24 hours. Once, we had to leave the house for several hours until an unexploded shell in the building next to ours could be defused. However, we were fortunate indeed, because there was no street fighting close to us.
There was, of course, no electricity, gas, or running water. Since Berlin still had a sizable number of horse-drawn vehicles, many hand-operated water pumps continued to function in the streets. To get water from these pumps was now a risky undertaking. One waited for a lull in the shelling and then ran full speed with a pair of buckets towards the pump, hoping that not too many people would already be there. At times, because of incoming shells, one had to hit the ground. When this happened on the way to the house, all or most of the hard-gotten water would be spilled, meaning a return trip to the pump. On one of my water forays, I observed a group of Asian soldiers in German uniforms moving along pressed against the housing fronts. They truly looked scared, not perhaps so much because of the shelling but because they realized their fate should the Russians get hold of them.
One day, a neighbor and I were hovering in the doorway ready to rush to the pump at the next break in the bombardment when a shell burst in the street. Once again, luck was with me; I remained unhurt, but my neighbor was next to me on the ground, fatally injured.
Food had become very scarce, but shopkeepers began to give away whatever they had left without asking for ration coupons or money. It all happened in an orderly fashion; I recall no one pushing ahead or trying to get more than anyone else.
We had no more bread, and so I cautiously made my way to a baker two blocks down the street. Of course, I had taken off my yellow star. No Jew was wearing the star anymore. When I returned with a small loaf, Russian soldiers from Marshal Koniev’s army (as we later learned) had entered the house. We immediately tried to make it clear to them that we were Jews, and above all that I was not a German soldier. At first, they were skeptical, drawing a finger across their throats indicating that they believed all Jews had been killed. We showed them our stars and our identification papers with the large imprinted J, and fortunately, one of the men sharing our apartment knew enough Russian to explain our situation. It took some days for the reality to sink in before we could give in to our feeling of relief.
For us, it was over; we had survived. We had outlasted Hitler's Third Reich.
©2004, Fritz Gluckstein. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
In Berlin, during the fall of 1943, the devil’s den—that is, Adolf Eichmann’s headquarters—was hit by a bomb from an American plane, and the SS decided on immediate repairs. My parents and I had just been bombed out for the second time and were staying temporarily at the Jewish Hospital. One morning, on my way to work with the demolition and cleanup crews, I was stopped by hospital officials and told that I had been selected to be part of a Gestapo-ordered “catastrophe mission.” Together with about a dozen other “selectees” I climbed aboard a moving van; the doors closed, and off we went in complete darkness.
After half an hour’s bumpy and swaying ride—no wonder, I realized, that so many things are broken during a move—the doors opened again; we climbed out and found ourselves in front of Kürfurstenstrasse 115-116; the infamous headquarters of Adolf Eichmann. We stood around for a few minutes until a man wearing the Yellow Star—the foreman of a group already working at the headquarters, as I learned later on— and an SS officer came out of the building and looked us over. The officer pointed at me saying, “I want him; he looks strong.” He motioned me to follow him, led me into the basement and told me to wait for the building caretaker.
SS Second Lieutenant Hardenberg—his full name was Ernst Henning von Hardenberg, I later learned from a list of SS officers in the library of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—was always polite, never raised his voice, never threatened me or made an antisemitic remark. Frankly, I still wonder how he got into the SS, let alone into Eichmann’s headquarters; he definitely did not seem to belong there. I believe it is quite likely that he was a descendant of Karl August von Hardenberg, a steadfast champion of Jewish causes. Karl August von Hardenberg, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica, was the Prussian chancellor who, in 1812, was instrumental in enacting the edict concerning the civil status of Jews.
My first job was to help the building caretaker clean and straighten out the basement. After that I was assigned to various kinds of work inside and outside the building, alone or with a group of others. Lt. Hardenberg came by from time to time and occasionally spoke to me. I soon realized how lucky I was to have him as supervisor. Most of the other officers, I was told, were quite nasty. One day I was told to help Captain Stuschka, who lived at the headquarters, move some furniture. He was barely civil, but at least he did not live up to his reputation as one of the most malevolent and aggressive officers. Several times I saw the notorious Major Rolf Gunther, Eichmann’s deputy. Either he was marching around leading a big German shepherd dog and scowling at every Jewish worker, or he was standing on a courtyard balcony cursing us. They told me that he liked to sneak up on Jewish workers in order to catch them taking a rest.
The head devil I saw only once. Working in the courtyard, I heard, “Eichmann is coming.” I knew who Eichmann was. Every Jew in Berlin knew who Eichmann was—the driving force behind the deportations, or evacuations as they were called. I wondered how he would look. I did not know what to expect. Then I saw him—ordinary, nondescript; nobody would have noticed him in a crowd. He approached with a group of civilians, apparently demolition experts, stopped right next to me, and discussed whether a side entrance ought to be cleared of rubble. He decided not to have anything done, if I recall correctly, and left without another word.
One day a group of about six of us had to clear the rubble that had been thrown out of the top floor windows and had landed right in front of the main entrance. We loaded the broken bricks, plaster, and other debris mostly by hand—there were only two or three shovels—into wheelbarrows and moved it down the street. Two enlisted SS men alternated in guarding the main entrance. It was a rather pro forma guard duty; they did not have to stand in one place or walk a prescribed number of paces. They just had to be somewhere in front of the headquarters.
One of the two guards was short, in fact quite short for an SS man, stocky, and had a distinctly ruddy complexion. The other was taller, perhaps six feet, pale, and had a sullen expression. The two men exchanged places every two hours, but we always knew right away, without looking, which one was on duty. The taller guard was constantly standing behind us, frequently cursing, sometimes under his breath to himself, other times loudly, directly at us. Whenever we tried to take a brief rest, he truly let go, “You damned, lousy gang get going, or I’ll give you a kick.” He really seemed to enjoy his crude tirades. In fact, he appeared to be just waiting for us to take a break so that he could cut loose. We, of course, did not so much as look at him.
How different it was when the short guard was on duty. He mostly paced up and down in front of the building; occasionally he looked at us but never said a word. Whenever we took a breather, he always found something across the street that needed his attention; even today I can clearly picture his face. It was obvious that the man made a point of not harassing us. Why? As in the case of Lt. Hardenberg, I wondered how he got into the SS.
For four days the moving van brought us to the Kürfurstenstrasse in the morning and returned us to the Jewish Hospital in the evening. However, at the end of the fifth day we were told that our special assignment had ended and to get back to the hospital on our own. The next morning on the way to my regular work, I did not leave the hospital through the main entrance. I climbed over the back fence, just in case.
In retrospect, I find it noteworthy that, even in the devil’s den, there were two apparently decent men, Lt. Hardenberg and the short, stocky, ruddy guard. I still wonder what became of them.
©2011, Fritz Gluckstein. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
