Marianne Strauss

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Marianne Strauss was a Jewish woman who was born in 1923 in Essen, a city in the indutsrial region of western Germany. Her account of the time of the holocaust is rare and fascinating.

Contents

[edit] The Rare Case

Strauss was one of the very few people who were able to avoid being deported to a Nazi camp or a Jewish ghetto. To make things even more unusual, she didn’t even have to stay in hiding, nearly as much as the lucky few who were able to avoid deportation. And this wasn’t because she had forged documents or wasn’t known the authorities, it was for a few other reasons. She was a very attractive young woman, she was brave and smart, and above all she had many connections with Germans who were prepared to risk their lives for her.

[edit] Early life

Marianne was born in 1923 in Essen, a city in West Germany. She was born into a rich Jewish family. The father of the Strauss family was a very successful businessman, who did well even in times when everybody else in the countries was doing badly. Although the family feared what Hitler could do to them, they felt sheltered because they were wealthy and their region was more tolerant of Jews than the rest of the country. This shows that Marianne, being in this family probably didn’t have the same fear that most of the Jews in the country did of the Nazis. She was shocked when she went to a German high- school and experienced racism for the first time.

[edit] Life in Upheaval

When the Nazis started deporting Jews, Marianne’s family was able to gain exemption from this, because they were respected in the Jewish community and were asked to inform other families of deportation. This did not mean at all that they wanted to support the Nazis though, they were extremely lucky to avoid deportation themselves. While this was all going on, they were attempting to immigrate to Sweden, America or a South American country, unfortunately, all their attempts to do this failed, they Nazis didn’t allow them to leave even with modified papers, and the countries they wanted to go to also didn’t cooperate.

During this period of uncertainty Marianne spent her time helping the Jewish community around her. She sent many packages of food off to people she knew in the Jewish Ghettos, and she helped people cope with what was going on around them. It was at this time, that she discovered a left wing organization of German and Jewish people called the bund. The bund was basically a group of people who were against the Nazis, but their aim was not to protest but rather to secretly help people get out of the country and use each other for moral support. It was really more of a large group of friends than an organization, but it was still very effective at what it strived to do. Little did Marianne know, the bund would be the main reason she survived the holocaust.

Soon the Strauss’ were probably the only Jewish family in the region who had not been deported. One morning in August 1943, just two days before the family was set to immigrate to Sweden, the Gestapo and some SS officers appeared at their door. They said that the family had two hours to prepare their luggage for the next transport to the East.

At this time Marianne was faced with a difficult decision, should she run, and risk an almost certain death or should she cooperate and hope for survival? Here is an excerpt from her account:

“The Gestapo officials did not let us out of their sight. The allotted two hours were filled with feverish packing of the few things that we were able to take with us – clothing which, in the unknown destination of a ‘work camp’, should be practical warm and with luck keep us alive. Then came my moment. The two officials disappeared into the basement, probably to find some loot. Unable to say goodbye to my parents, brother and my relatives, I followed the impulse of the moment, ran out of the house just as I was, with some hundred-mark notes which my father had stuffed into my pocket just a few moments before. I ran for my life, expecting a pistol shot behind me any minute. To go in that way seemed to me a much better fate than the unimaginable one that might await me in Auschwitz or Łódź, in Treblinka or Izbica. But there was no shot, no one running after me, no shouting!”

Marianne ran to the Bund, and immediately bleached and cut her hair, changing her appearance completely. The Bund decided that she could stay with various members, all around the country. Here is another excerpt from her account:

“It was decided that I should never stay for more than three weeks with any one person. We had to prevent the relatives or neighbours from getting suspicious. In any case, I had no food coupons, so my friends (from the bund), carried the great burden of having to feed me from their rations. But I had some money and access to suitcases containing clothes and linen that my parents had hidden some weeks before their deportation, so I was able to barter their contents with farmers in the country in exchange for food or clothing coupons. This was an essential but very dangerous operation.”

[edit] Life in Hiding

Over the next two years Marianne lived like this. She lived with families of the Bund all around East Germany, for short periods of time. This was very unusual. As most Jews who had avoided the country were hiding completely in one spot and not moving, or if they were moving they would have tried to leave the country. But when she was with these families she went out just like a normal German. She was able to do this as long as her papers were never checked. The only time she really ran the risk of her papers being checked was on the trains between the cities that she was staying in. If she went on the train like everybody else, she knew that she would be caught. So she went into the carriages with all the Gestapo and SS officers and looked very German. If they ever asked her what she was doing, she would say that she couldn’t tell them because she was under direct command from the furuh. She was very brave, and smart, with this amazing attitude and the bund behind her she was able to live so differently to the rest of the Jews. While she was living in relative safety her family were in a Jewish Ghetto or a death camp. She lived constantly with uncertainty about them and whether she would ever see them again. Here is another excerpt from her account.

“On 7 June 1944 – on my twenty-first birthday, I was… in Beverstedt and heard on the BBC that the occupants of the transport that had gone from Thereinstadt to Auschwitz on 18 December 1943 had been gassed in the last few days. I knew my parents and my brother had been on the transport to Auschwitz.”

[edit] The Later Years

As Germany’s military situation worsened, Marianne fled to Dusseldorf a village which was meant to fall to the Americans very soon. It fell almost immediately, and before Marianne knew it she was free.

She moved soon after to England and got married and had children with a Jewish man. She worked as a teacher there, and also reported to the BBC on the rebuilding of Germany. She Died in 1996 and published her account as a very small article in an unheard of German Journal. Her story was put together by historian Mark Roseman in his book about her, “The Past in Hiding”.

[edit] Final Notes

Marianne’s story shows a side the era that is very rare. It is amazing that any Jew in Germany was able to survive. And even more amazing that Marianne was able to survive so well. She did her best to help people when she could, and really made a small difference in her community, but this was impossible when she was hiding. Her story shows how Germans if they really wanted to could save Jews, and how effective organizations like the Bund were. It’s a story that gives deep insight into the society of that time, which has fascinated people ever since.

This is just one story though, so many amazing things happened in it, that today very few people would ever see anything like, in their entire life. Yet this society was reality for millions of people then. How could such things happen? The holocaust is an unanswerable question, which will fascinate people forever.

[edit] References

All quotes taken from "A Past in Hiding", Marianne Strauss' biography by Mark Roseman (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Roseman).