Professor Johann Clement is a terribly important man. Everyone at the university doffs his cap and smiles and bows and says, “Good morning, Herr Doctor.” At night there are other professors and their wives and sometimes fifteen or twenty students pack into Daddy’s study. They sing and argue and drink beer all night along. Before Mommy’s stomach started showing she used to like to joke and dance with them.
There are so many wonderful tastes and smells and feelings and sounds for a happy seven-year-old girl.
The best times of all were those nights when there would be no visitors and Daddy didn’t have to work in his study or give a lecture. The whole family would sit before the fireplace. It was wonderful to sit on Daddy’s lap and watch the flames and smell his pipe and hear his soft deep voice as he read a fairy tale.
In those years of 1937 and 1938 many strange things were happening you could not quite understand. People seem frightened of something and spoke in whispers … especially at a place like the university. But … these things seem quite unimportant when it comes carnival time.
Professor Johann Clement had very much to think about. With so much utter insanity all about, a man had to keep a clear head. Clement reckoned a scientist could actually chart the course of human events as one would chart the tides and waves of the sea. There were waves of emotion and hate and waves of complete unreason. They’d reach a peak and fall to nothingness. All mankind lived in this sea except for a few who perched on islands so high and dry they remained always out of the reach of the mainstream of life. A university, Johann Clement reasoned, was such an island, such a sanctuary.
Once, during the Middle Ages, there had been a wave of hatred and ignorance as the Crusaders killed off Jews. But the day had passed when Jews were blamed for the Black Death and for poisoning the wells of Christians. During the enlightenment that followed the French Revolution the Christians themselves had torn down the gates of the ghettos. In this new era the Jews and the greatness of Germany had been inseparable. Jews subordinated their own problems to the greater problems of mankind; they assimilated to the larger society. And what great men came from this! Heine and Rothschild and Karl Marx and Mendelssohn and Freud. The list was endless. These men, like Johann Clement himself, were Germans first, last, and always.
Anti-Semitism was synonymous with the history of man, Johann Clement reasoned. It was a part of living-almost a scientific truth. Only the degree and the content varied. Certainly, he felt, he was far better off than the Jews of eastern Europe or those in semibarbaric condition in Africa. The “humiliation oaths” and the Frankfurt massacre belonged to another age.
Germany might be riding a new wave but he was not going to turn around and run. Nor would he stop believing that the German people, with their great cultural heritage, would ultimately dispose of the abnormal elements which had temporarily got control of the country.
Johann Clement watched the blows fall. First there had been wild talk and then printed accusations and insinuations. Then came a boycott of Jewish business and professional people, then the public humiliations: beatings and beard pullings. Then came the night terror of the Brown Shirts. Then came the concentration camps.
Gestapo, SS, SD, KRIPO, RSHA. Soon every family in Germany was under Nazi scrutiny, and the grip of tyranny tightened until the last croak of defiance strangled and died. Still Professor Johann Clement, like most of the Jews in Germany, continued to believe he was immune to the new menace. His grandfather had established a tradition at the university. It was Johann Clement’s island and his sanctuary. He identified himself completely as a German.
There was one particular Sunday that you would never forget. Everyone had assembled at Grandma’s house in Bonn. Even Uncle Ingo had come all the way from Berlin. All of the children were sent outside to play and the door to the living room had been locked.
On the way home to Cologne neither Mommy nor Daddy
spoke a single word. Grownups act like children sometimes. As soon as you reached home you and your brother Hans were bundled right off to bed. But more and more of these secret talks had been taking place, and if you stood by the door and opened it just a crack you could hear everything. Mommy was terribly upset. Daddy was as calm as ever.
“Johann, darling, we must think about making a move. This time it is not going to pass us by. It’s getting so I’m afraid to go out into the street with the children.”
“Perhaps it is only your pregnancy that makes you think things are worse.”
“For five years you have been saying it is going to get better. It is not going to get better.”
“As long as we stay at the university … we are safe.”
“For God’s sake, Johann. Stop living in a fool’s paradise! We have no friends left. The students never come any more. Everyone we know is too terrified to speak to us.”
Johann Clement lit his pipe and sighed. Miriam cuddled at his feet and lay her head on his lap and he stroked her hair. Nearby, Maximilian stretched and groaned before the fire.
“I want so much to be as brave and as understanding as you are,” Miriam said.
“My father and my grandfather taught here. I was born in this house. My life, the only things I’ve ever wanted, the only things I’ve ever loved are in these rooms. My only ambition is that Hans will come to love it so after me. Sometimes I wonder if I have been fair to you and the children … but something inside of me will not let me run. Just a little longer, Miriam… it will pass… it will pass…”
NOVEMBER 19,1938
200 synagogues gutted!
200 Jewish apartment houses torn apart!
8000 Jewish shops looted and smashed!
50 Jews murdered! .
3000 Jews seriously beaten!
20,000 Jews arrested!
from this day on no jew may belong to a craft or trade!
from this day on no jewish child may enter a PUBLIC school!
FROM THIS DAY ON NO JEWISH CHILD MAY ENTER A PUBLIC PARK OR RECREATION GROUND!
A SPECIAL FINE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS IS HEREBY LEVIED ON ALL THE JEWS OF GERMANY!
FROM THIS DAY ON ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARM BAND WITH THE STAR OF DAVID!
It was hard to believe that things could get worse. But the tide ran higher and higher, and the waves finally crashed onto Johann Clement’s island when one day little Karen ran into the house, her face covered with blood anti the words, “Jew! Jew! Jew!” ringing in her ears.
When a man has roots so deep and faith so strong the destruction of his faith is an awesome catastrophe. Not only had Johann Clement been a fool, but he had endangered the life of his family as well. He searched for some way out, and his path led to the Gestapo in Berlin. When he returned from Berlin, he locked himself in his study for two days and two nights, remaining there hunched over his desk, staring at the document that lay before him. It was a magic paper the Gestapo had presented him with. His signature on the paper would free him and his family from any further harm. It was a life-giving document. He read it over and over again until he knew every word on its pages.
… I, Johann Clement, after the above detailed search and the undeniable facts contained herein, am of the absolute conviction that the facts concerning my birth have been falsified. I am not nOw or never have been of the Jewish religion. I am an Aryan and…
Sign it! Sign it! A thousand times he picked up the pen to write his name on the paper. This was no time for noble stands! He had never been a Jew … Why not sign? … it made no difference. Why not sign?
The Gestapo made it absolutely clear that Johann Clement had but one alternative. If he did not sign the paper and continue his work in research his family could leave Germany only if he remained as a political hostage.