A Visa or Your Life!

From: Chapter 25.  Berlin 1941

     One morning in April, when I was not working at Wannsee I walked past the Woolworth’s store at nearby Alexander Platz and noticed a big sign in a window display of thermos bottles. Like most other consumer goods, these were a rarity in wartime Germany, since all production efforts were for military output.

     Seeing the bottles, I instantly thought how nice it would be to have one for the anticipated trip to Lisbon. We had already been told that the journey would take five days, and that we had to provide our own food. These thermos bottles would be great for the whole group, and they were cheap, only 3.95 Reichsmark each. But it was not even ten o’clock in the morning, and surely by four in the afternoon, when Jews were allowed to shop, these bottles would be gone! I decided to try my luck and test my alleged non-Jewish looks. (In Germany during Hitler’s time, being told that you didn’t look Jewish was considered a compliment). In the store there was a big counter with what seemed like hundreds of thermos bottles piled up behind it. A nice looking saleswoman, perhaps thirty-five years old, approached me from behind the counter. “Can I help you?” she asked.

     “Yes, I would like to have some thermos bottles,” I said in my perfect high German.

     “How many?” she asked.

      “Well, I would like thirteen,” I said.

     “Thirteen?” she said, with some suspicion in her voice. “Why do you need that many?” Now I had to think fast and act calm.

     “Oh, our class is making an Ausflug (class trip) and it will be good to take some hot drinks with us,” I said, thinking back a few years to when I had indeed participated in an overnight trip with my class in Celle to the Harz Mountains. But I had no idea if such class trips were still being done, now that it was wartime.

     The woman looked at me with critical eyes. “Are you Aryan?” she asked. “I think you may be non-Aryan.”

     My thoughts were racing. Only self-assurance and a little chutzpah would get me out of this situation.

     “I am Auslanddeutscher,” I replied, “I come from Holland and there we don’t know just what that is, Aryan or non-Aryan!” I knew from my years of growing up in Celle that German citizens (Gentiles) living in foreign countries had the privileged status of Auslanddeutscher, because they were counted on for support of the Fatherland, and were expected to be loyal and supportive.

      “So, you are Auslanddeutscher, then let me see your identification card, I don’t believe that you are Aryan!”

     “I don’t have an ID card, I have a German passport, but that is at the authorities, here is my police receipt.” With that, I showed her the receipt.

     “Well, I don’t think you are Aryan, I cannot sell you anything now. You have to come back after four o’clock,” she said.

     “If you don’t want to sell me anything now, I will come back,” I replied. But just to show her that I felt wronged, I added, “Will you please put aside thirteen bottles for me, to make sure they are not all sold out by this afternoon?”

     The woman said she would, and I left. At four o’clock I was back at Woolworth’s and the woman had put the