Preface to Eva Margolinsky
To anyone who survived, the horrific
massacre of over six million Jews by the Nazis in the third and fourth
decades continues to be the story of the 20th century. The Holocaust
was not the only genocide to stain this turbulent hundred years. What
is unique is the passionate commitment of Jews to tell the story of
that dark period, to gather and preserve the stories of the famous and
the ordinary who died and who survived. This determination never to
forget not only memorializes those who died, it is a fist of defiance
in the face of tyrants and killers who would silence an entire people.
Every voice and memory preserved is a victory, a refusal to be
silenced. The smallest incident, the most obscure encounter, the most
ordinary exchange reverberates and adds a missing piece to the
collective story.
In the May issue of this journal, Eva
Margolinsky memorialized her mother and grandmother for their courage
during World War I. The inspiring stories of these two women would have
been lost except for Eva setting them down. Feminists were active in
Europe and the U.S. during the first and second decades, but women’s
place was still the home. Eva’s mother and grandmother did not budge
from their home, they never encroached on male territory or went
searching for adventure, but history came to them. In part one of “War
and Chocolate,” Eva shows how their legacy served her well when she
grew into young womanhood and, when the Nazis seized power in Germany,
she was driven out of both her home and her country.
If silence could be embodied in a
sculpture or a painting, the style would have to be that of the Cubists
because the word has so many dimensions. Silence is a noun with
multiple personalities. The powerful leaders of the world’s governments
and religions kept silent during the Holocaust, silence which was
interpreted by the Nazis as assent to murder. But many individuals,
like the local priests Eva speaks of, helped Jews silently and
anonymously, and their silence was an act of self-defense that made
altruism possible. In times of danger, forgetfulness is a form of
silence that can protect, but the protection, over time, can extend to
erasure from history. Eva doesn’t remember the names of the two priests
who helped her and her husband escape death, but she wanted to make a
record so that the generosity and courage of people who risked their
lives to save others would be recognized and honored.
EVA MARGOLINSKY
War and Chocolate-Part 1
When
Hitler came to power in Germany, I was living in the city of Cologne
where I worked as a secretary for an international metal company. The
man I planned to marry, Werner Goldberg, had written articles for a
Socialist newspaper which the Nazis didn’t like and they wouldn’t give
him a work permit or a visa to leave the country. When the Nazis began
to arrest dissidents and Jews, his situation became very dangerous, so
he escaped to Belgium.
Werner had relatives in Belgium and they
knew a French official who helped me get a visa. I was permitted to
travel in Holland and to Belgium, but I was not allowed to work in
Belgium. I was given permission only to go and take care of my fiancé’s
cousin who was almost paralyzed with rheumatism.
My mother had died shortly after the
first world war, but my father was still alive. I urged him to come
with me, but he absolutely refused. He thought he was safe. He said, “I
fought in the first world war for Germany. They won’t do anything to
me.”
What was I to do? Leave the country and
join my fiancé, or stay in Germany with my father. This was a very hard
choice to make. I was going to stay, I couldn't leave my father alone.
But my fiancé’s brother was remaining in Germany to take care of his
mother, and he undertook to take care of my father too, so that I could
go. Werner’s brother was a prominent surgeon, and I really believed
that he could take care of and protect our parents better than I could.
In 1938 I went legally to Belgium. My
fiancé and I immediately applied to an official of the King for a
permit, and within a week we were married in a civil ceremony. Werner
could not legally work in Belgium either, but he spoke English and
became an interpreter for another German refugee, a man who was a very
talented commercial designer. Werner helped him to get work, and that
way he was able to earn some money.
In May 1940, Hitler’s army invaded
Belgium, and the Belgians started to arrest all Germans regardless of
whether they were loyal to Germany or, like my husband and me, were
fleeing the Nazis. Werner was arrested and sent to a concentration camp
in the south of France.
Shortly after that, I escaped aboard a
Belgian refugee train. I had never seen a train like this. When I got
to the station, I saw that the doors were wide open, there was no
charge for a ticket, people just got on, and when the train was full,
it left. Once the train crossed the border I became an illegal refugee
too, because I did not have a visa to be in France.
I knew the name of the camp where my
husband was detained, and when the train was near that place, I got off
and I walked to the camp. As I came near the gate, I saw many women
waiting outside. They were all like me, trying to see people inside. I
asked an officer at the gate for my husband, and he was allowed to come
out and meet me. No one had much food. I had managed to find two eggs
and some bread and we ate that.
When the French officials examined my
papers, they put me in the concentration camp with Werner. These camps
were not like the ones in Poland. The French didn’t treat us badly. The
worst thing was that there was almost nothing to eat, but the French
people in the district were no better off. Everyone, inside the camp
and outside, was hungry.
Hitler’s army was on the march. As the
Nazis approached Bordeaux, the doors of the concentration camp were
opened and everyone went out. Our situation grew more dangerous every
day. The French and the refugees, we were all trying to find safety and
get away from the Nazis. On the train a woman and her daughter were
arrested. Many people were arrested by the Nazis. France was full of
refugees. There were so many refugees in Toulouse that a needle
couldn’t pass through that city.
A group of us went on to a small town
called Perpignan. I said I wanted to go to a Jewish organization.
Everyone said, “Why do you want to go there? You won’t get any money.”
I said, “I don’t want money. I only want to find out what is going on.”
The organization was near another
concentration camp, but there hadn’t been any communication between the
people at the center and the people inside the camp, so they were glad
when I walked in. They interviewed me right away because they were
trying to get information about what happened to people in those camps.
Letters were posted on a wall at the
center, and to my astonishment I found one addressed to me. It was from
my aunt in America, and that was a wonderful letter because it said
that my American relatives would do everything to bring Werner and me
to the United States, and that helped us with the French officials.
But without visas we were still illegal
aliens, and France was very anxious to get rid of all these refugees.
Werner and I traveled by train to Marseilles where we tried to get
visas. The first one I managed to get was to Siam. Then we heard that
Spain and Portugal were giving visas. The Spanish and the Portuguese
were very nice, especially to women, so it was the women who had to
stand in line for visas. I was able to get visas for both countries.
But we still had the problem of getting
out of France. We couldn't leave legally without exit visas, and we
couldn’t get those because we had entered illegally. In Marseilles
people were being arrested, and we wanted to leave. A man promised to
help us get out of France. He told us to go to a place that was very
high in the Pyrenees. Werner and I went by train to this place in the
mountains, but that man wasn’t there. We found a bridge between France
and Spain. We could see Spain, but we couldn’t cross the bridge. We sat
by the edge of the road with our legs hanging down, looking at the
bridge to Spain that we couldn’t cross.
We waited for the man for several days
but he never came. We had heard that Catholic priests were helping Jews
and we got the idea to go to the local church and ask for help. Not
only priests did this during the war; many people did.
The priest said he would help us. He told
us to go for a walk, but to leave our suitcases behind so people
wouldn’t know that we wanted to leave the country. We were to look and
act like people just out for a walk.
During the weeks we spent in the
concentration camp we had very little to eat. Werner and I had both
lost so much weight that we could wear all our clothes. I think my
husband wore four pairs of pants.
The priest instructed us to walk along
the road until we came to a field where a big stone marked the border
between France and Spain. At that place we were to leave the road,
cross the field, and go to another road that was being paved, and take
that to another village.
When we came to that place with the
stone, we also saw a little hut with two French officers. We couldn’t
leave the road and cross the field without giving ourselves away, so we
continued to walk along the road.
After a while we saw the two French
officers leave the hut and go for a walk. They left the hut empty, and
Werner and I ran as fast as we could across the field. We heard shots
behind us, but I don’t think they were really trying to kill us. I
think they knew what we were trying to do and they wanted just to scare
us.
We searched for the unpaved road. We
couldn’t find it because it was hidden by trees and bushes, but finally
we did. We started walking but we didn’t know which way to go, but in a
little while a man, a peasant, came with a wagon and horse. Werner
tried to speak to him in French, to ask how to get to the village where
the priest had told us to go, but he didn’t understand. My husband was
also fluent in Spanish, and when he tried that the man understood and
he gave us directions.
When we got to the church, the priest was
away. His housekeeper said the Germans had already been there, the
Nazis, and she told us to go to the church and hide behind the altar.
We waited there behind the alter until
the priest came. We have him regards from the French priest. He took
our passports and went to the police office. The head man was out for
lunch, but the man on duty understood what the priest was trying to do
and he put the official French exit visa on our passports.
That night we slept in that village in a
little hotel. The next morning we caught a train to Barcelona. Really
we wanted to get to Portugal because that visa could be extended
indefinitely. In Barcelona we found that the train to Madrid didn’t
leave until evening. We didn’t have much money and we wanted to
preserve what little we had, so instead of going to a hotel, we walked
around the city all day.
On the train to Madrid, the compartment
was very small, only three feet wide. Just before we left the station,
a man wearing a big swastika came in and sat down near us. Then the
conductor came to check our tickets and he said out loud, “Oh, you’re
from Germany.” The man wearing the swastika heard that, but he didn’t
react.
We didn’t know what to think.
During the night Werner left the
compartment. The man with the swastika went out also, and he stood next
to Werner and said that he hated the Nazis because they were
interfering with his business. We were relieved until he said that
maybe in the morning he would tell the officials that we were from
Germany, and then we were afraid and couldn’t think what to do. But
when morning came he said goodbye and left. So first he made us afraid
and then happy.
In Madrid we waited one day, then caught
the night train to Lisbon. Now that we had visas, we had no trouble at
the border. In Portugal we were safe and we stayed there until we got
our American visas. Because so many refugees were applying, we had to
wait six months.
I can’t remember the name of either of
those priests now, but I remember their courage and their kindness.
Without their help, we would probably not have escaped.
