Papa's favorite customers were the minor nobility and some
princes. There was a time when Germany was home to dozens of
kings, princes, barons. You could not go far in any direction
without coming across a castle. Since he spoke a flawless
German, Papa moved easily among the aristocracy. It was a
satisfaction to him that they knew and respected him as an
observant Jew who kept his cap or hat on in their presence.
For some reason, exorbitant taxes perhaps, these people
became impoverished under the brutal Nazi regime and so,
could not pay their debts. Since there was only a trickle of
new business in our concern, once a month Papa would travel
to several of the castles or places where the nobility now
lived, since many of the castles had been turned into museums
or were in total disrepair. Mostly he traveled to the former
Herzogtum Wurttemberg, Markgrafschaft Baden-Durlach or Baden-
Baden, to raise some cash on unpaid bills.
I remember on one of these trips, Papa took me along to the
huge manor of an elderly baroness in Baden-Baden who offered
me milk chocolate, which I refused. Papa said, "Anni never
eats sweets." Since I had been `certified' as the family
nosher, it was hard to keep a straight face. She then
gave Papa an unusually long, gold-on-gold embroidered
tablecloth in lieu of cash. Mutti cut it into three parts and
gave two of them as wedding gifts. I still have ours.
On one of Papa's forays to a castle near Bruchsal, Prince
Eugene told him that he had no cash. However, he had cleaned
out the moat around the castle and was raising trout there.
Since his unpaid bill was large, he offered Papa as much
trout as he wanted and could sell.
Before returning to our home, Papa stopped at the local
kosher fish store and asked the owner if he would mind if
Papa accepted the trout and sold them.
"If you can do it on a Monday," was the reply, "it will not
affect my business."
The sale was announced in the Adlerstrasse and Herrenstrasse
Shuls and became broadcast by word of mouth. Early on a
Monday morning two weeks later, we received ten barrels of
trout. Mutti immediately put one barrel aside "for me."
"For you?" Papa asked.
"Yes, for needy families. I wish that we could have those
fish cleaned. It would be so much more bekovod for
them."
"That we can't do," said Papa. "If the paying customers see
fish being cleaned, they will also want that, and it would
mean hiring a man for hours. What we will do is to wrap them
well and I will ask Willi Vogel to send a small truck to
deliver them; he is always looking to do a mitzva. The
paying customers will take theirs home."
And so it was done. The sale was a success since for the past
two years there had not been kosher meat, so that the trout
were snapped up. When I returned from the Religionsschule
that evening at 8 o'clock, all the fish were gone, the
cleaned barrels had been returned and Papa and Mutti were
having tea while making out the envelopes for the
maaser distribution.
Papa Goes to Berlin
After being released from Nazi jail in 1936, Papa redoubled
his efforts to obtain a Family Certificate for our emigration
to Eretz Yisroel. Friends suggested that he travel to Berlin
to apply in person to make an urgent appeal and mention that
he had been arrested by the Gestapo and had been jailed for
ten days. So one evening he took a night sleeper train to
Berlin in a two-bed compartment.
Papa was not successful in acquiring a certificate. At that
time, there were a great number of men in concentration camps
who would have been released, had they had a place to which
to emigrate. So a man who had been released from jail did not
seem so urgent a matter to the people at Headquarters. Yet,
he did have an interesting experience on the train.
As he told us later, when he entered the car there was
already a man in the upper berth, asleep, or so it seemed.
When dawn broke, the man in the upper berth still had not
moved. Papa thought, I don't care whether he is a Nazi or
not! A Jew davens and I will daven.
Unfolding his tallis, he heard a shriek from the upper
berth, "I couldn't sleep a wink all night. I thought that you
were a Nazi..."
The man was a Jew from Mannheim who was going to Berlin for
the same purpose!
"People must talk to one another," Papa told him. "Had you
asked me something, we would have talked and you would not
have been in fear all night."
The Babje's `Curse'
My maternal grandmother, the Babje, was a truly amazing
woman. Married at 16 to a chosson she met for the
first time under the chuppa, she never traveled more
than a few kilometers from Kolbuszowa. Yet, what wisdom was
hers! What love for Yiddishkeit, for mitzvos!
"This is all we take with us to eternity," she used to say.
What love for Torah, what gratitude to Heaven. "To be born is
a great matuna from Hashem." She had no patience for
complaints she considered frivolous. "May it be the will of
Hashem to protect us from tragedy." She knew that small
upsets, inconveniences, frustrations are part of life and
felt it was sheer ingratitude to dwell upon them.
She was immensely careful in her speech. "What is said here
is heard there." If women guests turned to gossip, she would
stand up -- the signal for them to leave. Would someone
forget herself to utter a curse, she would call out, "The
brocha cannot enter a place where there is
klolla."
When the Babje felt aroused at an injustice perceived, she
had her own special `curse':
"Tomorrow morning, may her/his breakfast consist of soft
rolls with hard butter."
