Der Chronist verlässt das Nikolaiviertel und schaut sich in der unmittelbaren Nachbarschaft um.
Ohmstrasse
1, 1914 – 1942: Eleven Jewish lives; ten untimely deaths
By David Alexander and Rivka
Alexander-Yahich
Although the date of the wedding is
unknown, Lea Meschoulam’s first marriage was arranged by her family in
Constantinople. She was widowed soon afterwards. Her second marriage – to Josef
Jahisch, the man she had always preferred – was probably in 1912, and was
certainly not arranged. To avoid
scandal and family disapproval, the couple departed for Alexandria, where their
son Muis was born on 6 August 1913.
Josef found no work in Alexandria. When
they heard from Lea’s brother Isaac that he could find a job with a Greek
tobacco company in Berlin, they set off once more. They arrived in the night of
1 January 1914. Fireworks were exploding all around. What kind of town was
this, they wondered – a place of constant celebration?
Muis was nearly four months old. It is not
known whether Josef found the job he had come for, or how soon the family
settled at Ohmstrasse 1. But one thing is certain: they had arrived just in
time for the First World War. Within two years, Josef had been given a choice:
if you don’t enlist in the Turkish army, we’ll conscript you into ours. He
chose the former, and was killed by a British bomb near Istanbul within a few months
of the birth of Perla, his third child. His death set a precedent: his
firstborn, Muis, would be the only member of his family to die of natural
causes.
[photo 1: family gathering. Muis is the
young man at right in the front row.]
Though Muis remained stateless until he
became a Belgian citizen in the 1950s, he had little difficulty in becoming
part of the society his parents had brought him to. As a speaker of Ladino –
the language of Sephardic Jews – he had to repeat his first year at primary school,
but on one memorable occasion soon afterwards he was held up as an example to
his classmates. After he and every other child in the class had been beaten for
agreeing with the teacher’s statement Der
Lehrer lehrt, he suddenly realised an essential distinction: Nein, der Lehrer lernt! The rest of the class was beaten for a second time for
being too stupid to understand what the only foreigner in the class had
understood.
As a young man, Muis worked with his uncle
selling and repairing Persian carpets from a shop in Joachimthalerstrasse. And
some years later, in Belgium, his ability to speak like a true Berliner would
save his life. So, too, did the fact that the Nazis had no specific orders to
arrest stateless Jews born in Egypt.
[Document 1: Sammel Lager Mecheln]
Later, Muis inevitably looked back on
Berlin with pain, but also with pleasure: it was his town, and had always accepted him. It was not a town of anti-Semites.
Anti-Semitism came from outside: “It was Hitler who made me a Jew,” he said.
After Kristallnacht,
Muis realised he must leave Germany. By then, his mother had long had a new
partner, a fellow Turkish Jew, Josef Mentesch, and five new children: Lisa,
Rebeka, Rachel, Rosa and Albert. Did they, too, consider leaving? We will never
know.
[Photo 2: Josef Mentesch, Lea
Meshoulam-Jahisch and four of their five children:
Rebeka at back left, Rachel
at back right, Rosa at front left, Albert at front]
Muis’s attempted departure came in January
1939. But he was betrayed by the Luxembourgeoise border-runner who had made the
arrangements, and was arrested at the border station. She had advised him to
carry very little money; if he were searched, he might be suspected of
smuggling currency. He therefore carried a very small sum – which the Gestapo
used to pay the taxi fare to the police cells.
In February or March, he arrived in Dachau.
Luckily for him, he remained there only until May. He owed his release to his
closest cousin, Rachi Meschoulam, who had been authorised to emigrate to Palestine,
but then transferred her authorisation to him. She then left clandestinely from
one of the northern ports. Her family laughed as they bade her farewell at the
station. “You’re making a fuss about nothing – you’ll be back again before long,”
they told her. She never saw them again.
Muis returned to Berlin in June 1939. On 6
June, the British embassy gave him a visa to enter Britain en route for
Palestine, and the Belgian embassy granted him a transit visa “sans pouvoir y faire volontairement arrêt”
– without the right to remain voluntarily on Belgian soil.
[Doc 2, Fremdenpass. pages 16-17]
He left Berlin soon afterwards. Due to a
body search on the German side of the border, he missed the connection to the
train that would take him to the Channel port. He never got to England, and
remained in Belgium for the rest of his life.
But what of the family he left behind? While
he received a few Postkarte from
Berlin – all written by his sisters, as his mother could write no German – these
could never reveal the full story.
[Doc 3, Letter from Rebeka Meschoulam, 16
August 1941]
On 21 October 1941 his sister Perla sent
him a new contact address in Berlin. In all likelihood, they never stayed there:
three days later, they were deported from Grunewald to the ghetto at Lodz (Litzmannstadt).
[
Doc 4, Letter from Perla Jahisch, 21
October 1941]
Muis received one more card, now lost. It
was from his family, who had arrived in Lodz, and said they were well. They
were allowed to receive parcels. Muis sent parcels, but never received a reply.
The remaining nine members of his family
were murdered at the death camp in Chelmno (Culmhof) on 13 May 1942.
In June 1989, fifty years to the month
since his departure from Berlin, Muis returned, hoping to discover where his
family had died. He was unsuccessful. Until the end of his life, their fate was
unknown to him.
[photo of family in windows, Ohmstrasse 1]
For the last time, he also returned to
Ohmstrasse – then still in the East, which required him to pass through
Checkpoint Charlie. To disguise the fear he felt when confronted once again by
police in green uniforms, he blamed his son-in-law for bringing him on a stupid
trip which he hadn’t even wanted to make.
The house in Ohmstrasse was still standing,
but was difficult to identify. As for Luisenstadt, it had changed almost beyond
recognition. But the Jannowitz Brücke was the same as ever, and Muis was
cheered to see that people still leaned on its railings, watching the green
waters of the Spree flow beneath them, just as they always had.
4
December 2012
In
memory of Moucha Yahich
Alexandria
6 August 1913 – Brussels 29 December 2004
and
of his family:
Josef
Jahisch
who
died in Turkey in 1917
and
Lea Jahisch
Josef Mentesch
Ester Jahisch
Perla Jahisch
Lisa Meschoulam
Rebeka Meschoulam
Rachel Meschoulam
Lisa Meschoulam
Rosa Meschoulam
&
Albert
Meschoulam
who
died at Chelmno on 13 May 1942
