My Middle Name is Israel
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I was born a German Jew. In 1933, when Hitler and the Nazis came to power, I was 12 years old, and one of only 160,000 Jews in Berlin, a city of 4 million. At that time, there were but 565,000 Jews in all of Germany, a country of 67 million. Any short description of my family’s history in Germany would have to contain the words, "assimilated Jews." Family oral history has it that more than 300 years ago my ancestors left Spain and settled in Posen, which is near Berlin. Longer than has been recorded, we lived in Berlin happily and successfully, though not as religiously observant Jews. Most of my family did not escape the Nazis in time; they were expendable citizens of a country they had called their homeland for over 300 years. Of my immediate family who stayed in Germany until as late as 1939, only my parents and I got out safely. There is no record of exactly when in the early 19th century we acquired our German-sounding family name, but I do know how we got it. Jews in Germany originally had only first names, "Son of ...." and again, a first name. A decree in the early 19th century, modeled on the Napoleonic code, required that all Jews in Germany must take family names. Some took names which sounded as though they had money, such as Goldfinger or Goldschmidt; others named themselves after cities like Berlin or Wien; still others after their profession. Names like Tischler (carpenter), Schuster (shoemaker), or Schneider (tailor) sprang into existence. One particularly indecisive ancestor of mine, who was living in Bavaria at the time, went to a Bavarian magistrate for advice on this weighty matter and said, "I don’t know what name to take." So the magistrate replied, "My best friend has just died. Why don’t you take his name?" His name was Riess and from that time forward we were known as the Riess family. I am proud to report that today in Bavaria around Garmisch-Partenkirchen near the Zugspitze, there is a Riessackerstrasse (Riess Field Street) as well as Riessersee (Riess Lake).
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About the Book
My memoir covers my life in Berlin, London, and Shanghai. I was born in Berlin in 1921. I grew up in the early 30’s as an assimilated German Jew of an upper middle class family where I witnessed the rise of Nazism, I also rode my bicycle in February 1933 to see the Reichtstag fire, which started the arrest of Communists and Jews. The race laws in 1935 stopped sexual relations between Jews and Christians. I took my bicycle on Kristall Nacht (Crystal Night) in November 1938 to see the smashed windows of stores owned by Jews and burning synagogues. I was warned by my Christian teacher not to go home, but to stay with Christian friends. My father was a dentist and the last patient that night was a Gestapo agent who arrested him and took my father to police headquarters for transfer to a concentration camp. He was released in 3 1/2 weeks, and my parents worked with the Church of England to find a family who would take me in. I went to England on a children’s transport and lived with a British family who paid for my engineering studies since I was only allowed to take $ 10.00 out of Germany. The war broke out in September 1939. I was declared an enemy alien. After much effort, the Bow Street station court declared me "friendly" and I could continue my studies. After graduation, I wanted to get out of wartime England. It seemed impossible, but I found an advertisement in the London Times for an engineer to go to Shanghai for a large British trading company to convert a steel window manufacturing plant to make machine tools. I was hired but had to find a ship to leave from the only open port which was Liverpool. I found a Japanese diplomatic ship (Haruna Maru), which was transporting wives and children of Japanese diplomats as well as Mitsui and Mitsubishi bank people to Kobe, Japan. I got my German (Nazi) passport extended by the Swiss ligation and embarked in 1940 on a long sea voyage to Shanghai. The ship went through the English Channel in the blackout. Our first stop was Lisbon (all lit up), where we waited for French refugees for a week. The Italians would not let us go through Gibraltar. We had to go to Casablanca in North Africa where the entire French fleet had escaped. The British mined the harbor while we were loading gunpowder on order of the Japanese government. It took 24 hours to leave the harbor by having the crew in wooden lifeboats push any floating mines away from the ship. It took us 14 days to sail along the west coast of Africa. The 10,000-ton ship had never traveled so many days without a port. We were running low on water and coal, but finally docked in Capetown. I could not go ashore, since the port was British and my passport was German with a Swastika. All the ports which followed were British also; Colombo, Bombay, Singapore and Hong Kong. We arrived in Shanghai after 10 weeks on the high seas. The British company met me with a car and driver. When I arrived at the furnished townhouse, I was introduced to the houseboy, cook, and maid (three separate people!). I started a wonderful life as a "foreigner". I met the British general manager the next morning, who showed me the plant, which I would convert. We worked from 9 to 12 and 2 to 5 pm and half a day on Saturday. The rest of the time was spent in clubs and on the racecourse. It was a great life. Credit cards did not yet exist, but all we needed was our business card and my expenses at the restaurants would be deducted from my monthly salary. All this changed on December 8, in 1941. The Japanese navy occupied the International Settlement. British, American, and Dutch personnel had to wear red armbands. I was put in charge of the British operation, since I had a valid German passport. The British were interned in 1944, and I carried on to make machine tools, which went to Chung King for shipment to Australia. The British general manager returned at the end of the war and the normal business of the company started up again. In 1946, I was told by the British consulate officer that the Chinese Communists may take over the Chinese National government at any time. I should decide if I would want to go to Europe or any other place. Europe was in bad shape. I wrote to Washington, since a US consulate was not yet established. I received an immigration number for Germans and was told that I could immigrate to USA as soon as a consulate was opened. I left for San Francisco in April 1947.
About the Author
Hans Ludwig Riess was born in 1921 in Berlin, Germany to Jewish parents. As a child, he saw Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. He viewed the damage of Jewish shops and fires of synagogues on "Kristall Nacht" and his father being taken to a concentration camp. Mr. Riess was sent to England on a "Kinder Transport" in March 1939 to study engineering and lived with a British family. He sailed during the war on a Japanese diplomatic ship from England via South Africa to Shanghai, China, where he worked for a British trading company. He witnessed the Japanese occupation and was permitted to continue working since he had a German passport. Mr. Riess arrived in San Francisco, CA in 1947.