The dawn of realization

Abstract

My parents knew each other already when living in Berlin. My Jewish mother Ruth met my non-Jewish father Erich when they were both members of a Jewish resistance group which was part of the Communist Party in Opposition (KPO), a splinter group of the main Communist Party (KPD). My father was the only non-Jewish member of that group, having been introduced to it by a Jewish friend, Heinz Sachs. Even though it was clear early on that there was no future for Jews in Germany my parents waited until the end of 1938 before leaving. My mother hadn’t wanted to desert her father, Benjamin Magnus, while her mother had already died from stress-related asthma in 1936, having been sickly for quite a while. They were lucky to get a visa for New Zealand (with Australia also being prepared to accept them) and my mother left Berlin legally in November 1938. It was a different story for my father who would not have been allowed to leave Germany after conscription was introduced there on 1 September 1938. As a subterfuge, he purchased a return rail ticket to Zürich, ostensibly to visit a friend and flew from there to London where he met up with my mother ten weeks later.