Inge Bernhard Part III: The Rest of the War and the Beginning of Life with Carlos

Inge continues to discuss her wartime experiences as well as the first encounter with Carlos Bernhard, her future husband.

All questions in (...) are mine.

The Gestapo didn’t come back. We were more afraid of the bombs that were falling nightly, almost, and we spent a lot of time in our shelter.

I got very nervous. The bombs made me very, very nervous, the terrible noise and the fear that we would all die. Once, in the—I worked in Siemens, at the Siemens Company. My father—after I finished high school, my father found work for me there, so I didn’t have to go to camp or anywhere. They spared me. I had a very nice time at work. The people were not Nazis. They were Sozis, leftists, and they helped me in every way. It was fantastic. It was just amazing how nice the people were, the workmen. I worked in the field of electricity where I had to do some measuring things and there were these leftist people. They said, “If you want to go into the darkroom, I have to develop photos, go into the darkroom and mend your socks. We won’t tell anybody.” I had a great time.

In the office, I had a book in my drawer and I took out the book and read. When some of these officials came and go through to see if everything was all right, I just closed my drawer. My boss allowed me to do that. That were all anti-Nazi somehow.

In school, actually the same thing. I had no trouble in my school. I had a very close friend who’s still my closest friend in Berlin of my youth. We spent the whole school years together, eight years. Her father was in an interrogation camp for some time because he had done something that the party didn’t like. So we were very much afraid for him, for his safety, more than for my own safety. She later collected all the letters that he wrote to his wife and that she wrote back to him, in codes and so on, she collected that and she sent me the book. So I had friends like this, which made life for me very pleasant in that respect.

Also, I had a music group. We met once a week. They were all people who were half-Jewish and couldn’t perform. And they invented programs. We had actors, we had musicians. We had teachers, violinists. I had to play a certain piece. Everybody got one part of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. I got the first piece, the first prelude, and then they went on and they were analyzed. So we had an interesting life in many ways. I met interesting people there. I also went to concerts, but always alone, because my parents couldn’t go. My mother wasn’t allowed, so I went by myself.

(Did you have to wear a yellow star?)

No, no. My mother didn’t either.

(She didn’t. Was she half-Jewish, too?)

No, my mother was Jewish.

(Now, where is her family during all this time?)

The family was in Braunschweig, where I was born. Her mother, her brother, one brother, one sister, and one of the brothers was Carlos’s stepfather. He went, when it was still possible, with his wife to Guatemala. So he survived in Guatemala. You probably never met them.

(What’s his name?)

His name was Walter Aronheim and his wife Lily. Lily was Carlos’s mother. Walter Aronheim, my uncle, became posthumously my, uh, father-in-law. So Lily was his mother. In second marriage, she married my uncle. So this is how we knew each other. We knew each other as cousins. Actually, Carlos was my cousin.

(When did you meet Carlos for the first time? How old were you?)

Ah, Carlos. I was a little girl. We have a picture where I was about two years old and I have a nightgown of Carlos on and I’m on the arms of his mother. He is six years older. He was eight, I was two. That’s how I remember, at least through the picture, I remember him.

Then I saw him when I went to Braunschweig to see my grandmother. But that was during the time until ’42. In ’42 I was eighteen and I already had finished school. Carlos left already in ’33. So I didn’t see him much. In ’33 I was nine years old, and then I didn’t see him any more, until he came back once. Carlos, when was that? In ’37 or ’38 he came to Germany. He came to Berlin also to see us. Then I saw him again. He was a cousin.

(OK. So your family, your mother’s family, do they stay together?)

My mother’s family consisted of the brother, the Jewish brother with his Christian wife, and the sister, being Jewish, with her Christian husband. But they were in great danger of being exiled to a camp, and they had somebody who would kind of—a Gestapo man who my aunt befriended, he came often to the house. She was a very beautiful Christian lady. He said, “Mrs. Aronheim, if the situation gets very serious and they will take your husband, I will let you know before.”

So one day he came and told her that they would come and get him and take him to a camp, and also my grandmother. And so then my uncle made suicide. He wanted my aunt also to do suicide together. She wanted it, actually. But he said, “You have to keep the name of Aronheim alive, although we don’t have children. But I want you to have your life and just remember me.” Then they tried to give poison to my grandmother, but didn’t work. She spit it out and then they took her to the camp. Later on we heard that she survived the camp only for four days, so we were happy about that. But the trip must have been terrible— the trip from Braunschweig to Theresienstadt. Also, staying in a kind of hotel where they collected all these—all the Jews for sending them to Theresienstadt—it was a very, very bad place. It was close to where my grandmother lived, and my aunt took buckets of soup to them every day, so at least they would have something to eat. But it was a very, very sad time.

When my uncle died, there was nobody who wanted to bury him. But finally, in the place where my aunt had lived, where she was born, they accepted to bury him in a corner somewhere. Nobody would give a speech for him, although I think he had already become Christian. I don’t really remember. But no pastor would come. Nobody would do that. So they read—the other uncle of my aunt, who was still living, because the Gestapo had not come to them yet, he read the letter that my uncle had read [sic]. It was about his love for Germany and that he had fought in the First World War for Germany, the country that he loved. That was his home, and he hoped that after Hitler Germany will be again a normal country.

It was such a moving letter, which unfortunately I didn’t get, because at that time you didn’t have photocopies and I didn’t write it. But I remember, I cried for days. I thought I would never be able to laugh again.

But then life went on, and my aunt still lived. Shortly before the war was over, she committed suicide, because she was afraid. Somebody had told her they would take her. I survived this period. Because I was young, I was still hoping that nothing would happen to my family. Meanwhile my brother was taken to a camp, but to a hard labor camp. He had a very, very difficult time. He had to work very hard. They got very little food. But they could write letters. So my mother was able to send them potatoes that he was baking on a little iron stove with the friends, or he was digging out potatoes raw from the field and eating them raw so they would have something to eat. And he survived somehow. He came home one day. He was deserting his camp when he thought that the Russians were coming already, so he deserted. He went on a train somehow, took a coat of a Russian soldier that he found, and came home with this coat.

So my father said, when he came home, he said, “You cannot do this.” He even had a weapon. He said, “The Germans are still here. You cannot do this. We have to hide you somehow.” So then he went to the organization, to the head of the organization, and said, “Here I am.” He stayed with them for some time. He even became a helper in the kitchen and he could eat there. (chuckles) My brother was very clever.

Then when the war was over, he came home. But this weapon that he had, he gave to my father. We had a little lake, and we made a kind of ceremony. We went to the lake and said, “This weapon will be thrown into the lake so nobody will find it.” The coat he still had when the Russians came, because he didn’t have anything to wear. The Russians wanted to take him. They thought he was—it was an army coat. It was not a Russian coat, it was an army coat. They thought he was an army officer. And my father— it’s a long story— my father became the helper of the Russians to install the Olympic Stadium, which had been an army camp, a German army camp. They needed an engineer who would know how to get water and electricity. They chose my father, who was very good in all these things. So we had the help of the Russians. We were very lucky. We got food from them. They recognized that we were Jews, which the English later didn’t. This went on—for three months the Russians stayed in Berlin. Then came the English.

It’s another story.

So we survived the war. We all survived, only my brother got multiple sclerosis a few years afterwards. Then the German government took charge and they accepted that it could have been from the bad experiences and the hard labor camp, and they paid all the expenses.

My grandmother died, my uncle died, my aunt died, and my mother, who wanted to stay with her family, she survived. We could have gone to America anyway.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Alder Enterprises LLC