Bruce Henderson - The Ritchie Boys - The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler

As the violence and hatred mounted around them, Julius and Hedwig Stern decided it was time to get the family out of Germany. They began writing to Jewish organizations, seeking information about emigrating to America.

A serious impediment for the Sterns and other Jews wanting to leave Germany was a new law passed by the Nazis, which restricted the transfer of cash, bonds, or other assets out of the country. Previously, Germans had been permitted to take out up to the equivalent of ten thousand dollars, but the Nazis reduced this amount, initially to four thousand dollars. As their campaign to plunder Jewish property and assets expanded, the amount was reduced further still, to ten Reichmarks, which was then worth about four U.S. dollars. The criminal penalties for exceeding this amount were stiff, including imprisonment and forfeiture of property.

At the same time, the U.S. State Department was diligently following a special order, issued by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, that required visa applicants to show they would not become public charges at any time, even long after their arrival. If they lacked the immediate means to support themselves, an affidavit was required from someone in America guaranteeing they would not end up on the public dole. The public-charge mandate and the various machinations one had to go through to prove financial independence—something not required of earlier immigrants to America’s shores—reduced the number of aliens admitted from 241,700 in 1930 to just 35,576 in 1932, and became a major impediment to anyone wanting to immigrate to the United States.

Desperate to escape from the Nazis, the Sterns wrote to Hedwig’s older brother, Benno Silberberg, who had moved to America in the 1920s and become a baker in St. Louis. Would he sign an affidavit for the family to come to America? they asked. It was not clear that Benno would be able to help them, but he was their only relative in America.

By spring 1937, school had become so fraught with anguish, anxiety, and actual danger that Günther’s mother and father pulled him out of all his classes. Instead, they hired a tutor to improve his English for their planned move to America. Those easy, bright years of Günther’s in German schools—from the one-room Jewish school where his curiosity was first awakened to the courses, choir, and sports he enjoyed in the public high school—were over. In their place? The sixty-year-old tutor, a graying, stooped, emaciated-looking gentile named Herr Tittel. Beginnning in the mid-1920s, he’d worked as a teacher at a Brooklyn orphanage. But after eleven years, he grew homesick and returned to his hometown of Hildesheim, where he eked out a living teaching English, mostly to Jews hoping to emigrate.

Günther grew to like Herr Tittel, who told him colorful stories about America during their weekly lessons. While living in the U.S., Herr Tittel had become a fan of professional baseball, and he wove grand narrative descriptions for the young Günther, extolling Grover Cleveland Alexander’s masterful pitching and Babe Ruth’s epic home runs. Herr Tittel was easygoing and somewhat eccentric, and would frequently start humming popular American tunes in the middle of lessons. Within a few months, Günther had learned more conversational English—albeit in peculiar German-accented Brooklynese—than he had in three years with his high school teacher.

That summer, Günther’s parents gave him permission to join three friends from his Jewish youth group on a monthlong bicycle trip to the Rhine, a six-hundred-mile round trip. His parents, certain the family would soon be leaving Germany, thought this might be their older son’s last chance to explore the geography of his ancestral country. Once they left Nazi Germany, Hedwig and Julius agreed, none of them would ever want to return.

The boys asked their youth leader to write a letter vouching for their character and wrote to Jewish community leaders in towns along their planned route to find places to spend the night. For most of the trip, families put them up, though in one town the best they could do was sleep on benches in the dressing room of the local Jewish soccer team. All three boys were good bicyclists, and they covered twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day.

In a sleepy river town, they pedaled along the riverside, watching people in canoes and paddleboats enjoying a day on the water. A short distance away, they saw a different scene: a line of docked military boats with heavy guns mounted on their decks. Their steel hulls shone, glinting in the sun; they looked newly built and ominous. Each vessel flew a Nazi battle flag with a swastika. These were unlike any boats the boys had ever seen. It was clear to them now: under Hitler, Germany was getting ready for war.

Günther had been home only a few hours when his parents called him into the formal dining room for a talk. The family never used this room unless they had company, so Günther knew this conversation was serious.

They had heard from Uncle Benno, Julius told his son. He explained to Günther that America was deep in a Depression, which meant that millions of people were out of work. The U.S. government required an affidavit of financial support for immigrants such as themselves, who had to leave their country with no money. But Uncle Benno had lost his full-time job and was picking up only part-time work, which meant he didn’t have the resources necessary to sign an affidavit for an immigrating family of five.

Günther’s father spread out a serious-looking document, several pages in length, on the table.

All this time, his mother had remained silent. Now at last she spoke up, her voice low and solemn. “Uncle Benno’s affidavit has come through for you alone,” she said, explaining that Günther would live with Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel in St. Louis until the rest of the family could join him. “You have an appointment at the American consulate in Hamburg in a few weeks,” she added softly.

“Mutti, I am going alone to America?” asked a shocked Günther. He could not believe what he was hearing.

“Ja, Günther.”

Since Uncle Benno had been able to provide an affidavit for only one person, she explained, it had to be Günther. Neither she nor his father would go without the other; at nearly sixteen, Günther was the oldest of the children. They would keep trying to find a sponsor for the rest of the family and hoped to all reunite in America soon.

It was obvious to Günther that his mother was struggling with this decision as much as he was. He had never pictured this day, and she had never fathomed sending her teenage son away to a foreign country alone.

Perhaps once he got settled in the United States, she suggested, Günther could find someone there to help them. She said this was a serious, grown-up assignment to give him, but she and his father believed he was mature enough to handle it. Most important to her and his father, his mother said, was that Günther would be safe in America.

His father, always the practical businessman, began to describe the logistics of Günther’s trip to Hamburg, one hundred miles north of Hildesheim. He had already worked out a ride for him with a Jewish family who had an appointment at the consulate the day before Günther’s. After what would be the longest automobile ride of his life, Günther would spend the night at a students’ pension, then return home the next day with the local family.

Günther’s father had contacted a Jewish organization in Hanover, which was helping plan his emigration. An affiliated group based in New York, German Jewish Children’s Aid, was taking small groups of Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. Günther would be joining one of these groups. The organization would pay for his ocean passage, provide a chaperon, and make sure he reached his aunt and uncle in St. Louis safely. The group had already sent a social worker to interview Benno and Ethel Silberberg; the social worker, according to her report, had found them to be “kindly, wholesome people” eager to welcome their nephew into their home.