LIVING AND WORKING IN THE CHILDREN’S HOME

Extracts from Bernt Roder’s interviews with Regina G. in 1996

Regina G. born in 1924, was an apprentice in the kindergarten in Fehrbelliner Strasse from 1939 to 1940. She left the school she had attended up to that time “voluntarily”: “It had become unbearable,because I was completely alone, all by myself. No one talked to me, I was so alone.”

She came to the children’s home in Fehrbelliner Strasse at the age of 15. Her intention was to become a kindergarten teacher. She was too young to start the training course, so at first she received general training on the job. She cleaned, helped in the kitchen, assisted in putting the children to bed, helped with homework, sewed and darned. She slept on the top floor of the house, sharing the room with small children who stayed overnight at the home.

Frau G. describes how the home was arranged: “Downstairs, when you came into the entrance hall, it was still an entrance hall like in the old days, no elegant reception table or anything like that. Up the stairs on the right was the kindergarten. So the parents rang the doorbell, or perhaps the door was already open when they brought their children to the kindergarten. So there were the kindergarten rooms and the courtyard on the street side … at the back were rooms, there was the big hall, that’s where we put up the … camp beds, you could say, the kind of folding beds still used in kindergartens. …The head of the kindergarten was Rosa Lewin. Then there was the office, facing the back. And Frau Bamberger’s office… and in the room next to the office, we (the employees and the head) always had supper. But not the housekeeping personnel, nothing like that…

Up one flight of stairs were the rooms for the after-school group and the crèche. There weren’t so many babies, Fräulein Gans worked on her own. And the after-school group, there was a very clever, well-educated woman, but really nice, not stuck-up, the head of the after-school group was called Edith Stern. And on the courtyard side there was the room where the seamstress worked, doing the mending …

And we were right at the top. That’s were our living quarters were, and a sort of terrace…when we went out, on a kind of terrace. Yes, I often played with the children there…we always had 45 (children). Around 40, 45. And I’d say most of them were from the neighbourhood. On the top floor there was a small kitchen and the washrooms.”

Regina G. remembers many names, some of which have already turned up in my researches and others which are quite new to me: the Wagenberg siblings, the twins Ruth and Regina Anders, Hilde Weiss who helped in the household, “Fraulein Gutmann, the nice lady who was the senior kindergarten teacher and strict Frau Lewin. But really, strict as she was, perhaps she wasn’t so bad”. She talks of Hilde Weissmann, Peter Wedlich and his mother Auguste Wedlich, an actress, who worked in the kitchen. She also remembers Sonja, Ernstl, Herbert. She shared a dormitory with the small children, with a window overlooking the courtyard. She speaks of Ilse Gutmann and Walter Kaufmann, the janitor, who later, when the home was closed down, carried off the residents’ possessions on a cart, following instructions from the Gestapo.

“There’s a bit of sand outside in the courtyard, where we played ball. And the balls often flew over the fence, then we went very politely to Zehdenicker Strasse, whether we could go through to get our balls. Yes, that was all right.”

The basement contained the big kitchen, the laundry, the cellar for storing potatoes. The food was prepared in the kitchen and brought to the dining room in large containers. The kindergarten and the school children had a hot meal every day. Frau G. could not say whether there was a lift to carry the heavy tubs of food. The janitor’s flat will have been in the basement as well.

After her first few months in the children’s home, Frau G. began a course at the seminary for kindergarten teachers in Wangenheimstrasse in the Grunewald district of Berlin. Because she was still too young, she had to have special permission. She lived in Fehrbelliner Strasse, bought the breakfast rolls for the schoolchildren and then went to the seminary. When she got back, she looked after the children, helping with homework, playing and doing crafts with them.

The Sabbath was celebrated upstairs in the living quarters. “We had Schabbes, as Jews should. The meal on Friday was so good, and we sang grace…Yes, and one of the big boys led the prayers.”

“And then all the children were bathed, or rather washed, not bathed. We had a washroom, it was like this, the two sides, there were basins here and basins there, so I could always… wash a lot of them at once. I felt so sorry for the children, with the cold water… and later I thought it was a good thing, such a good thing. Toughened. They had more resistance than spoilt children. Yes, if they got as far as Auschwitz, they’d been toughened by the cold water. Yes, and there were little toilets and they each had a toothbrush and towel. It was all wonderful; I only wish that every child in the world could have it so good.”

Regina G. was summoned to do forced labour for the company Blaupunkt in mid 1941. When she heard of people being arrested in another factory, she went into hiding for several months. She was arrested in November 1943 and imprisoned in Grosse Hamburger Strasse until February 1944. Then she was released to do forced labour for a company which sewed and mended military articles. Her daughter Helga was born in 1944. At the time, she was living illegally with her mother. After the war, she worked in the Jewish kindergarten in Joachimsthaler Strasse. When there were too few children there and it was closed, she started to work in the Jewish old people’s home in Wilhelm Wolf Strasse in Niederschönhausen, a district of Berlin. Later she was employed in the offices of the borough council of Wilmersdorf in Berlin.

Her father was killed by the Nazis; she lived with her mother almost until her death.

Translation Bridget Schäfer