Holocaust Survivor Speaks to Harvey

“Modern political history serves as a guide in helping us look at today’s problems,” said history professor Alex Morse on a recent Tuesday morning in February to the Upper School students gathered in the study hall. They were there to listen to Rye Brook resident Sel Hubert recount his experiences as a child Nazi-controlled Germany. “We can learn from his experiences, and they can help us to understand terrorism, and the events unfolding in Darfur.”

Sitting alone on the stage with no more than a microphone, Mr. Hubert began a story that would hold the focused attention of students and teachers for more than an hour and a half. “It’s difficult to comprehend that six million Jews and others were slaughtered during that terrible period,” he said, “so we are not going to focus on it.” He wanted to help the students understand what it was like to live under Nazi rule.

Mr. Hubert was born in Cronheim, a small town in Bavaria of mostly farmers and a few merchants. Cronheim was a place where both Jews and Christians had lived in reasonable harmony for hundreds of years. As an example, he explained that his father, head of the local Jewish organization and having some experience with electricity, was honored to be asked to wire the lighting for the town’s Christmas tree.

In 1933, Hitler became chancellor and the German parliament passed the Enabling Act. Within two years, the Nazi-controlled Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of all civil rights. Still, Mr. Hubert explained, the changes happened mainly in the larger cities. “In little Cronheim, nobody cared,” he said with a shrug. “Life continued as if nothing happened.”

Things did change the morning he walked to school with his older sister and a few friends. They were attacked by a group of non-Jewish students who began beating them; kicking and spitting on them, and calling them “dirty Jews.”

“I saw the teacher, and I tried to appeal to the him for help, but then I realized the teacher had instigated it.” He forced the students to memorize anti-Semitic slogans, and shout them on a march through town.

“Can you imagine what it felt like to shout ‘kill all the Jews’ when you are a Jew? I was 10 years old!”

They found out later that the teacher of his one-room schoolhouse had been a member of the Nazi party for many years. Eventually, the mayor of Cronheim enforced the Nuremberg laws. “Overnight, we were second class citizens.”

“You may ask why didn’t the others stand up for us? People were afraid for themselves,” Mr. Hubert explained.

His parents enrolled Mr. Hubert and his sister in a Jewish school in Nuremberg. “I loved school! Imagine! there was a separate teacher for each subject! I was like a kid in a candy store.” He also was able to play on the school’s soccer team, and recalls playing a game against another Jewish school in Fürth with a young Jewish student named Heinrich Kissinger. “Henry” Kissinger and his family emigrated to the United States in 1938.

Mr. Hubert described the huge stadium that Hitler had built for political rallies. “There were parades, flags, bugles, drums… the Germans, they loved that. After the ceremonies, Hitler would come in to speak. He was one of, if not the greatest orator of the 20th century but not because of what he said because most of it was evil. He could make them believe anything! ‘We will rise again and show the world…’” he said, shaking his fists. “They believed every word! The crowds went crazy for him!”

It was with the voice of the curious, slightly mischievous boy he had been in Germany as he remembered the day Hitler had come to Nuremberg. He had pushed through the crowed to the front row to see “the big shot” speak from the hotel balcony. “I’ll never forget looking into those steely eyes, piercing eyes.”

After two years of schooling in Nuremberg, the family could not afford his room and board, and he returned to Cronheim. On the night of November 9, 1938; Kristallnacht, the family awoke to the sound of bricks smashing through the front windows. “Eight or nine men came in and smashed my mother’s dishes and glasses. We could hear the sounds of them breaking furniture.” He and his parents huddled into an upstairs closet and waited in fear to be discovered.

“How did the world react? They did nothing. Yes, there were many decent Germans who were disgusted but they didn’t dare come forward. Some were gleeful, and participated.” The next day, the mayor of Cronheim came to what was left of their home with the chief of police and arrested his father.

“Now, what if this had happened in the west? What would you do? Call a lawyer? We could do none of that. Jews had no rights … and Jewish lawyers had been forbidden to practice three years before.”

Later, a neighbor had told them she saw his father being taken away by train to Dachau, the most notorious concentration camp. Passing on this information posed a terrible risk for her, and Mr. Hubert recalls this as the only act of kindness he witnessed in Cronheim.

His mother sought help at the American Embassy to no avail. “When we arrived at the Embassy, there were hundreds of other Jewish women and children desperate to do the same thing.” The immigration quota for German Jewish families was filled for the next three years.

Five weeks after his arrest, his father was released from Dachau, obviously beaten and mistreated. Forced to leave Cronheim that December, they fled to Aupsberg where relatives had a spare room.

“In Aupsberg, we lived in fear. My parents tried to get out [of Germany] but no country would open its doors.”

One day a letter arrived from Bloomsbury House in London that said they were allowed to send one child to safety in England, and the family decided to send his 16-year-old sister. Three months later, a letter came for him. Saying goodbye to his father was the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do. “We both knew, looking into each other’s eyes, that we would never see each other again.”

The Kindertransport program was ultimately responsible for saving the lives of 10,000 Jewish children. English citizens raised money (the equivalent of about $4,000 for each child) and opened their homes. “To my way of thinking, this was one of the finest hours of England.”

In London he was taken in by the King family. At this point, Mr. Hubert said he had lost all faith in people, but through Mrs. King’s warmth and patience, he began to feel safe.

Just 6 weeks later, Mr. Hubert was uprooted again and placed with the Stacy family when England declared war on Germany and children were evacuated to the countryside for safety. There was limited communication with his parents through the Red Cross, then no news for five years. “Nothing is worse than not knowing. Your mind conjures up horrible things.”

In 1945 he came to the United States, served two years in the Air Force and became a citizen. He received a letter from relatives saying his parents had died in a concentration camp, but it wasn’t until fifty years later when he visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. that he discovered what really happened.

They had been on the next to last deportation train headed for Riga, Latvia. Their train was diverted to Lithuania, where they spent ten days in an open cattle car in bitter cold. Eventually, they were marched into the woods and shot by Lithuanian police. Today, there is a monument erected in the Rumbula Forest near Riga dedicated to the almost 28,000 Jews who were murdered there. “At least then I knew,” said Mr. Hubert.

When he was finished, students gathered around Mr. Hubert to share their family histories and ask questions. They specifically wanted to know about his sister, now a great grandmother living in Baltimore.

When asked if he remembered any acts of kindness from non-Jews in Germany he could only name the neighbor who gave them information about his father. “Of course, I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for the kindness of people, but in Cronheim, there was no compassion.” he recalled.

He has kept in touch throughout the years with Mrs. King and her family, and Mrs. Stacy, the woman he stayed with when evacuated from London. “When someone helps you, stay in contact, and show your appreciation,” he advised. “One day someone will ask you for help… What will you do?”