The Art of Resistance

My Four Years in the French Underground

Justus Rosenberg

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780008306038
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

A gripping memoir written by a 96-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor about his escape from Nazi-occupied Poland in the 1930's and his adventures with the French Resistance during World War II

Part I

THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

1921–1937

AS I WRITE this memoir, I am almost one hundred years old—ninety-eight to be exact. The first two years of my life are the hardest to remember. Whenever I try, I hear my parents’ voices, see the contours of their faces, feel the softness of my crib. Everything else I know of my first years I picked up from stories my parents told friends and relatives about their smart son’s first steps and words.

The only objective evidence of my early existence are two photos of an infant sitting on a bear rug, and a birth certificate issued by the Danzig registration office stating that on January 23, 1921, a boy named Justus Rosenberg was born to nineteen-year-old Bluma Solarski, wife of businessman Jacob Rosenberg, age twenty-three, both of the Mosaic faith, as Jewish people were commonly referred to at that time.

Unless you are a stamp collector or interested in the two world wars and the period between them, you’ve probably never heard of Danzig, a seaport on the Baltic, for generations a bone of contention between Germans and Poles. At the Versailles peace conference after World War I, to reward the Poles for having supported the Allies, the League of Nations decided to grant Poland the independence it had lost in 1796, when it was partitioned between Prussia, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Per the Treaty of Versailles, Danzig was to be part of Poland, even though 75 percent of its population was ethnically and culturally German.

Then, to the dissatisfaction of both the Poles and the Germans, on November 15, 1920, the League of Nations declared the disputed territory to be a semiautonomous city-state with its own flag, national anthem, currency, and a constitution patterned after the Weimar Republic. It was to be called “the Free City of Danzig” and to consist of the seaport itself and some two hundred towns and villages in the surrounding area. The League appointed a neutral high commissioner to the infant parliamentary democracy to ensure that the rights of the 20 percent of the population who were Poles and 5 percent who were Jews would be respected. As the name suggested, the Free City had no entrance restrictions. Between 1920 and 1925, in the midst of continuing European political unrest, ninety thousand Jews from Poland and Russia passed through Danzig en route to Canada and the United States. Another six thousand, satisfied with the city-state’s parliamentary democracy and liberal economic policies, or who identified with German culture, chose to remain. My parents, who had no intention of emigrating to America, were among these.

They had come from Mlawa, a Polish shtetl only a few miles from East Prussia, so they spoke German fluently and were familiar with German literature and music. Like most young people of their generation they knew hardly anything of Yiddish culture besides the language itself. My mother, the daughter of a tailor, and my father, born into one of the wealthiest and most learned Jewish families in Mlawa, fell in love when they were very young, and my father had just begun to work in his father’s business. Marriage was out of the question because they belonged to different social classes, so they eloped—to Danzig—and sought to become assimilated into German culture as quickly as possible. Immediately after my birth—which came not long after their elopement—they hired a nanny named Grete, who taught me traditional German children’s ditties, German fairy tales, and the rhymed verses of Struwwelpeter and Max and Moritz. At age six I entered the Volksschule (primary school). I already knew how to read and write both German and Gothic script.

For all practical purposes, I was educated like a typical German child—as was my sister, Lilian, six years my junior. Our parents rarely spoke Yiddish in our presence except when they were discussing something not meant for our ears. Somehow, I picked it up anyway. They celebrated Jewish holidays irregularly and only occasionally attended services at a “reformed” synagogue. Like most Jews in Germany, my parents considered themselves Germans “of the Mosaic persuasion.” They rejected political Zionism, which regarded Judaism as a nation. When I was ten years old, my mother enrolled me at the most prestigious gymnasium in Danzig, the Staatliche Oberrealschule. As was true of many young people in those years, the world of politics fascinated me. At the age of nine, I already dreamed of becoming a diplomat.

In the Danzig elections of 1932, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazis, for short) won the largest number of seats in the Volkskammer (people’s chamber), the legislative assembly. That gave them the right to appoint the “senate” (the executive branch), which until then had consisted of a coalition of liberal democrats, socialists, and moderate conservatives. However, the special nature of the Free City of Danzig, with its role as an international port and financial center, made the Danzig Nazis put a moderate face on their policies and ideology in spite of their victory, and this remained the case for the next five years.

There were, of course, pupils in my class who came to school dressed in Hitler Youth uniforms, but they rarely ostracized me or voiced their displeasure that I, a Jew, was always picked to recite (because of my perfect German diction) the ballads of Schiller or poems by Goethe and other classical poets; nor did they object to my being chosen for the school’s Schlagball team (a German form of baseball). The teachers remained strictly professional. For instance, even after 1932, I was the history teacher’s prize student. I also must have been the favorite of the director of the gymnasium choir, for he recommended me to participate in the all-boy angel-chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, at St. Mary’s Church in town. Thanks to him, I was also selected to sing in the children’s chorus of Bizet’s Carmen at the Danzig City Theater, a theater traditionally subsidized by the municipality that continued to be so under the Nazi government.

I owed my love of singing to my father. As soon as he came home from his office, he would sit down at our old upright piano, play and sing (by ear) popular arias from Italian operas, and invite me to join him, which I enjoyed doing until I developed a taste of my own in music.

One afternoon when I was about fourteen, I heard the “Liebestod” (love-death) aria from Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde on the radio and fell in love with it on first hearing. For reasons I didn’t then understand, Wagner was anathema to my father and certainly not in his repertory. One summer’s day in 1936, when I was fifteen, my parents planned to stay out late, while I planned to take the suburban train to Zoppot and attend whatever was being performed that night at their annual summer, open-air, Wagnerian opera festival. It was Rienzi. Since I had no money for a ticket, I managed to get through a hole in the wire fence that surrounded the place and find an elevated spot with an unimpeded view of the stage. I was also close enough to hear all the subtle harmonies of Wagner’s music. Two years later, I learned that Wagner had been one of the most virulent anti-Semites of the nineteenth century and was Hitler’s favorite composer.

THOUGH MY FATHER’S father had not aided him financially after his elopement with my mother, once I was born, tensions eased between them, and my grandfather’s lucrative international business trading in grain was now supporting his son. My father owned a storage facility in town from which he fulfilled wholesale orders. It was on the ground floor of a three-story apartment in a pleasant Danzig neighborhood. A business office and the storage facility opened onto the street. We lived upstairs. Other Jewish businesses flourished in close proximity. Two doors down, for instance, was Levi’s clothing store. This was very convenient for my father and perhaps gave him a false sense of security.

A POGROM GERMAN-STYLE

Spring 1937

EARLY IN 1937, Nazi demonstrators began targeting Jewish businesses in Danzig. My father refused to take them too seriously. He didn’t believe they represented a change in official policy. They were disturbing, of course, for they reminded him of the spontaneous outbursts against the Jews common since the early Middle Ages. In the familiar pattern, anti-Semitic feelings would manifest for a few months and then die down.

Under the Nazis, however, the character of anti-Semitism was changing. Outbreaks of hatred against the Jews would neither be sporadic nor temporary. One beautiful spring day in 1937, I stopped at the window of a bookstore to look at the colorful covers on display. Suddenly my attention was attracted by shouting so loud and so close that it made the windowpane tremble. I tore myself away and headed in the direction of the noise. It was the sound of a group of Nazis chanting slogans and a crowd of onlookers walking along with them. I turned at the end of the block and saw at least thirty people—young and old—howling “Judas verrecke!” (“Let the Jews be slaughtered!”). I wanted to go and warn my parents, but I was curious to see what the Nazis would do. They were not in uniform, and they weren’t alone: a crowd of bystanders in the middle of the street moved slowly along with them. The Nazis themselves were moving slowly, making funny movements with their heads, to the right, then to the left, to take in everything that was happening around them as they marched. The mob beside them kept growing. Soon I really did want to get away and warn my parents, but I was now in the midst of them. I couldn’t move too quickly or I would appear to be abandoning the scene. I kept thinking, confusedly, wishfully, that perhaps they’d just disperse. I remembered my father’s words: “Bah! They’ll get over it; a few months from now everything will settle down.” But things were not about to settle down. These Nazis were getting wilder and wilder, their cries of “Death to the Jews” more and more virulent.

Now I myself was being pushed forward. When would the police show up and prevent them from doing something violent? But the police were nowhere to be seen.

The crowd was being squeezed closer and closer together. The Nazi agitators had reached Steiner’s grocery store, whose attractive shop front had been repainted the previous winter. The display window and the store’s clean, modern interior struck me as strangely out of place in this ominous tumult. I saw several of the Nazis holding bricks in their hands, others brandishing truncheons or carrying buckets of paint.

It happened like a bolt of lightning: a crash of broken glass, and Steiner’s shop window was smashed into shards. The men weren’t shouting anymore; they seemed to be in rapture over their fine work. The crowd remained silent, too, though the hiatus in the uproar didn’t last very long. Steiner came out of his store, his big blue apron hanging over his big belly. The children in the neighborhood were accustomed to making fun of him, and he’d often come out of the store, just like that, to chase them away. Now he looked stunned, surprised, like someone who had been slapped without his knowing why, as if by mistake. He stepped toward the Nazis, his hands out in front of him—begging for mercy? to protect himself? to show peaceful intentions? to reason with them? Suddenly he brought his hands to his face. Someone had thrown something at him and struck him. He stumbled backward, his hands covered with blood, his body careening. Then, with a quick motion, he turned and ran toward a large door at the back of his store. Everyone was surprised to see him escape so deftly, since they had the impression his big bulk was about to collapse on the pavement. He had left his store wide open, but behind the big oak door he seemed to be safe. I let out a sigh of relief.

There was a moment of indecision among the Nazis, and again I had the wishful thought that they would be satisfied. I was wrong. They started shouting again and some of them tore into the store. Cans of food came rolling into the street—sardines and fruit preserves—and they were pushing over pickle barrels, barrels of herring, and wooden crates of smoked sprats. I saw one Nazi pour a big can of oil onto the sidewalk. Some of them were attacking cupboards and shelves. I could hear, coming from inside, the noises of bottles clanking and various nondescript muffled sounds. The Nazis came out of the store one by one and eyed the crowd, each one sure of his strength. They were happy with themselves.

Then one of them noticed Mr. Klein, the tailor, standing next door in front of his shop, hurriedly attempting to close the shutters. The Nazis turned toward him. They seemed to be blaming him for Steiner’s hasty retreat. Mr. Klein was a small man who always dressed sharply, as was appropriate for a tailor. But he had left his jacket inside, and in his suspenders he looked even more diminutive than usual.

“What’s the rush, Dad?” said one of the Nazis, and the others burst out laughing. Before he could answer, another struck him in the face, first a slap, then blows with his fist, harder and harder, until the little man collapsed half unconscious; another kicked him again and again in the ribs, shouting, “Look! This is the way to treat a dirty Jew!” Someone corrected, “Not at all! He deserves the noose!” Mr. Klein wasn’t moving.

Someone kept shouting that the Jews were a plague—the land had to be rid of this vermin. Some others were demolishing everything in the tailor’s shop. Now the crowd was actively joining the Nazis. I was getting seriously worried about my parents and wanted to tear myself away. My father was probably downstairs in the storage facility. I feared the crowd would soon proceed to our street. On my right, I saw a small gap in the throng; I used my elbows and shoulders to make my way through to it. Too bad if they noticed my defection. I’d chance it. I kept moving in the opposite direction of the crowd, trying to look natural, as if I had something to do, despite the “interesting” goings-on here. Little by little I was getting free.

Within a few minutes, I had broken clear and was heading in the direction of my home, perhaps two hundred yards away. I didn’t look back but could hear behind me the sound of metal shutters rolling shut. The crowd was somewhat behind me now. I stopped to catch my breath and took a seat on a wall from which I could observe what was going on.

They were in front of Goldberg’s, a clothing store. The shop was protected by shutters, but some Nazis had found a big iron bar, actually a small girder, with which they were rushing at the store using it as a battering ram. The metal sheets made a noise on the girder’s impact like thunder. The window posts of the shop broke from the force, but the shutters held. The thugs dropped the girder in the middle of the street and tried in a concerted effort to force up the shutters manually. “Eins, zwei, drei, heben! (heave!) Eins, zwei, drei, hoch!” It still held. They tried again. The bolt gave way—slightly. The shutters lifted enough for a few of them to squeeze in underneath them. The crowd roared a cry of victory.

From inside, a woman’s scream, long and high. They pulled up the shutters a bit more and out rolled Goldberg, the crowd dragging and kicking him onto the sidewalk. He raised himself on all fours—the kicking went on. He scurried along the sidewalk in agony as three booted Nazis went at him relentlessly.

More shouts and groans, from inside now. Two Nazis emerged from under the shutter, dragging Frau Goldberg by the hair and by her arm.

I saw all this from my perch as clear as can be, but it was as if I didn’t understand what I was seeing. In films, there were images of violence a bit like it, but they were just films, unreal. Outside the theater everything would be normal again. The ...