Dear Marion,

I have forwarded to you the comments on our correspondence
that I received from Klemens, my son. All of the emendations
to my account which he has made are correct. Klemens not only
has a better memory and better judgment about family psychology,
but he also has the advantage that his grandparents confided
to him many details of family history which they found awkward
to impart to me, not, I think for lack of trust or affection,
but because I was already so actively and intimately involved
with current family problems, that, to borrow a technical
metaphor, the bandwidth of communication between us might not
have been broad enough to accommodate also historical details
irrelevant to issues that demanded immediate solutions.

As I sit now at the kitchen table in Konnarock with my afternoon
cup of coffee, there echo in memory my mother's words about thirty
years ago when I was sitting at the same spot: "Na, wenn wir 
mal tot sind, dann werdet Ihr erst richtig ueber uns herziehen."
(Well, once we're dead, you'll really rake us over the coals.)
I very much hope that's not what I am doing; rather, I hope that
I'm not deceiving myself when I postulate that a candid exploration
of things past is an act of piety.  In any event, my recapitulation
of "what they went through", (was sie durchgemacht haben) increases
the affection I now feel for my parents, and even after twenty years,
my sense of loss at their deaths. I wish that I might have been able
to help them even more than I in fact did when they were alive.

My father's apostasy, - if one wishes to denominate it as such, was
not a calendar event. It did not occur on that date in 1927, when he
became engaged to my mother, but it progressed over a span of about
50 years, constrained by the social, political and economic exigencies
in which he was enmeshed, and ultimately fueled by his own emotional,
spiritual needs for which he found no other nourishment than the music
of J. S. Bach. At the time of my parent's marriage, they agreed to make
no commitment to either religion. My mother rationalized to me many years
later that neither my sister nor I were baptized as infants in deference
to our grandmother's allegiance to the Jewish faith. Had the Jewish
community accepted my mother with the same generosity and tolerance as did
our grandfather, it is conceivable to me that our grandfather's religious
orientation, - whatever it was - might have prevailed also in my father's
family. However, an immediate consequence of my father's marriage was his
expulsion from the Jewish university fraternity of which he was a member,
an event which presaged seven years later, his expulsion from his family,
at least so far as your mother was concerned, After the survivor of our
grandparents died in 1934, the sentimental barriers to the family's drift
to institutional Christianity disappeared and with the incipient persecution
of Jews, the formal baptism of my sister and myself in 1934 or 1935 was at
minimum an act of protective camouflage.  My sister and I were then sent
to "Kindergottesdienst" (Sunday School) and my mother began once more to
attend church services at the Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche auf der
Schuetzenstrasse in Braunschweig. I am under the impression that my mother's
attendance was sporadic and that my father accompanied her only on occasion,
if at all. My parents were very much aware that if Pastor Frielinghaus had
accepted a Jew into his congregation, not to speak of baptizing him, he would
have risked what is nowadays called "detention" in a Concentration Camp.
If only for that reason, my father never professed a formal "conversion" to
Christianity during the Nazi regime. Whether he would have done so under
"normal" circumstances is speculative, but I doubt it.

After our grandmother's death in 1934, my mother, at the youthful age of 36,
became the de facto matriarch of the family, and Fritz dutifully presented
to her at least one woman whom he proposed to marry. My mother, who professed
to be able to read the thoughts and search the souls of those whom she
interrogated, turned thumbs down, and Fritz complied. Whether Fritz ever gave
her the opportunity to evaluate Margot Baumann - am I correct to remember
that as your mother's maiden name ? - I don't know; but my mother intimated
to me years later that their marriage had been something she could do nothing
about. If pressed, I would guess that Fritz brought Margot to Braunschweig to
introduce her to Heinz and Marga, but I have no memory at all. I do remember
one automobile trip our family made to visit Fritz and Margot in Bremen. It
must have been shortly before their emigration; I couldn't have been more than
five years old.  My father, as usual was at the wheel of our 1934 grey Ford
sedan, my mother next to him in front, and Margrit and I in the back seat.
The highway, long before there were Autobahnen, threaded through the
Lueneburger Heide, in a fog more dense than any I have encountered since.
Obviously the drive took many hours longer than expected. Long before we
reached Bremen, I was fast asleep. 

The next scene I remember was the elongated living room of an elegantly
furnished apartment in Bremen. Onkel Fritz and Tante Margot were there.
It may have been on that occasion that Tante Margot presented me with a
toy that tested my patience and skill. It was a small square wooden frame
into whose grooved edges were set twenty or more similarly grooved blocks
inscribed with various letters of the alphabet.  None of the blocks was
susceptible to removal from its bed, but, after minutes or hours of
fiddling, one could, by sliding one block past another, rearrange them
to spell out the edifying motto: OHNE FLEISZ KEIN PREIS (Without
Diligence No Prize) But less demanding and more interesting than this
test of persistence, was the new family's dog, a bitch that had been
trained to respond to Margot's command: "Was machen die Bremer Maedchen"
(Do like the Bremen girls) by flopping over onto her back and extending
her legs in a most suggestive manner. I don't remember seeing the
expression of the face of my prudish mother; but what else would
have preserved this scene, complete with libretto, in my memory,
inasmuch as I should hope that at the tender age of five, I was too
innocent to understand the meaning that this demonstration of canine
acrobatics was intended to convey.

That was the last I saw of Onkel Fritz and Tante Margot until March 31,
1939 when the Motorschiff Hamburg of the Hamburg-Amerika Paketfahrt
Gesellschaft docked at Pier 46 on Manhattan's West Side, and I espied
my father, Onkel Fritz and Onkel Georg waiting for us. There were various
small items of luggage to be picked up at the baggage counter. Ours
couldn't be found, because George had led us to the tourist-class claims,
I remember remonstrating and explaining to him, that this was the
wrong location, because, although penniless, we had arrived first-class.
The Nazis confiscated 94 percent of all the funds that we did not spend
in Germany. My mother had taken the hint and decided on a final splurge
of extravagant luxury before taking the inescapable plunge into poverty.
George didn't understand. It was not his style, and must have made
a very bad impression on him, but I was commended as being smart for
my age.

- to be continued.

Jochen