Montreux, Switzerland. 1942.
The four Nazis got off the train at Konstanz, the blond SS Sturmbannfuhrer eyeing him as he walked by. The train stopped again at the border. The rabbi had told him Swiss authorities were cracking down on refugees trying to enter the country. Jews who were caught were deported or handed over to the Nazis.
Swiss police boarded, checking papers. A heavyset officer, hat pulled low over his eyes, looked Harry up and down the way the Nazi had, as if he was guilty of something. Studied his identification, glanced from the photo to his face.
“Volker Spengler,” he said. “A German boy traveling alone in a time of war. Where is your visa?”
“I don’t have one,” Harry said.
“How do you expect to enter this country without a visa?”
“I’m going to stay with my grandmother.”
“Where does she live?”
“Montreux,” Harry said. “She is the only relative I have left. My father was killed in France during the invasion, my mother in Hamburg by an Allied bomb.”
“We have a strict policy concerning refugees.”
Harry had five hundred marks folded in his pocket, hoping it was enough. The rest of the money was hidden in the linings of his shoes. He handed the bribe to the policeman. “My grandmother asked me to give you this. To thank you, to show her gratitude for helping me.”
The policeman looked at the folded pile of bills, tucked it in the front pocket of his uniform shirt. “Welcome to Switzerland, Herr Spengler.”
He was finally free but didn’t trust the feeling. After all that had happened he couldn’t let himself relax. Thought about his parents, took the photograph out of his pocket, Harry posing with his mother and father in front of their house. He slid the picture in his pocket and looked out the window at the lush countryside, mountains in the distance, reminding him of Bavaria.
The train went on to Montreux, arriving in the late afternoon. He got off, walked into the station and found a city map in a rack next to the ticket booth. He went outside, studying the street grid of Montreux. He had no idea where he was going and asked a policeman for directions. It took twenty minutes to walk to the Sternbuch residence. He found the address and knocked on the door. It opened and a bearded man in a fedora said, “What can I do for you?”
He looked about forty, wore round tortoiseshell glasses and a shirt and tie.
“I’m looking for Frau Sternbuch.”
“And you are?”
“Harry Levin.”
“I’m Yitzchok, her husband.”
They talked for a couple minutes, Yitzchok asking where he was from, and where were his parents, and how he had escaped?
There were tables set up in the main room, people sitting around them drinking coffee and talking. It looked like a party. Yitzchok led him through the house to the dining room. A woman wearing what looked like a turban was sitting at the middle of the table, speaking to a group of bearded men wearing hats like the husband’s. She saw them enter the room and stopped talking. The men at the table turned to look at him.
“Recha, I want to introduce you to Harry Levin, a Dachau survivor from Munich.”
The woman stood and came around the table, her face telling him she understood what he’d been through. She put her arms around him, held him the way his mother did.
“Harry, there is nothing to worry about. You are safe,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It is a blessing you have joined us for Shabbos.”
Now the men got up, came over and shook his hand. It was a bit overwhelming these strangers welcoming him like this.
They lit candles and had Shabbos dinner, Recha Sternbuch, her family and forty displaced French, Czech and German Jews, a rabbi saying prayers, people passing platters of food. After dinner the tables were taken out of the rooms downstairs and replaced by mattresses where the refugees slept. It was an open house for anyone who didn’t have a place to stay.
Recha put Harry in a room upstairs with her son, Avrohom‚ who was thirteen, nice quiet kid who had a book in his hands, reading by lamplight.
“What is that?” Harry said.
“Talmudic scripture. Historical writings of the ancient rabbis. It is the legal code that forms the basis of religious law.”
“This is what you read for pleasure?”
Avrohom looked like he didn’t understand.
“What does it say? Read something.”
“Here is a passage: Babia Mezia 114b. ‘The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts.’”
“It should be changed to ‘the Nazis are beasts.’”
“You were in Dachau, my mother said. What was it like?”
Harry told him the whole story, the kid listening without expression.
“God was sitting up in the sky watching over you,” Avrohom said.
Harry didn’t see it that way, but didn’t say anything. The Sternbuchs were deeply religious Orthodox Jews. He didn’t want to offend them.
Recha cabled his uncle in Detroit the following week.
Harry Levin is alive and well, living with us in Montreux, Switzerland. Will arrange for passage to the United States when possible. Please send visa.
Yours sincerely, Recha Sternbuch.
Harry stayed with them in Montreux till the end of the war. Recha and Yitzchok were gone most of the time on their crusade to rescue Jewish children, the orphans of Europe. She was the toughest woman he’d ever seen, standing up to the police in Switzerland, and the authorities in other European countries, protecting refugees, saving thousands of kids.
When the war ended, Harry and a group of five hundred Jews sponsored by Recha took a train to Lisbon and boarded a ship on August 20, 1945, arriving in the port of New York two weeks later.
With the American visa Harry had gotten from his uncle, he went right through customs and immigration, no one giving him a hard time, no one to bribe. He had money and a place to live and nothing to declare. He exchanged his Swiss francs for American dollars at a bank on Fifth Avenue. Harry walked the streets, looking up at the tall buildings, amazed by the size of New York, almost overwhelming. He had seen shots of it in movies, but nothing like the impact of being there.
He stopped at a bookstore and bought an English-German dictionary and a map of the city. He walked to Grand Central Station at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Bought a one-way fare to Detroit, a fourteen-hour trip with all the stops, arriving on September 4, 1945 at 8:17 in the morning.
Harry took a taxi to his uncle’s house on Elmhurst, between Dexter and Linwood, the directions said, riding in morning traffic on Woodward Avenue, four lanes of automobiles in both directions, seeing Detroit for the first time, the city waking up, alive. It was small compared to New York, but still larger and more modern than the European cities he’d been to.
It was a nice-looking house, two-storey brick with a big porch in front and a green lawn, in a pretty neighborhood with a lot of trees. Harry was excited. He hadn’t seen his aunt and uncle since they left Munich in 1940. He rang the buzzer, waited, the door opened, his aunt looked at him and yelled.
“Sam…”
Harry stepped into the foyer, Esther hugging him, hearing Sam’s voice in another room. “What is it?” And then Sam appearing, coming down the hall toward them.
“My God, am I seeing who I think I’m seeing? Harry, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Surprise us? I almost had a heart attack. Where are your things?”
“This is it.”
“Esther will take you to Hudson’s; it’s a department store. You’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ve never seen anything like any of this.”
“You like baseball, Harry? That’s right, you don’t know from baseball. I’m going to take you to see Hank Greenberg, greatest ballplayer in the world.”
“Harry, you’re going to like it here,” Esther said. “We can buy fruit and vegetables even in winter.”
“How about apples?” Harry said.
“As many as you want.”
“You hungry, Harry? Of course you are. Esther, get him something to eat.”
It didn’t take any time, Harry fell in love with American girls and baseball, playing in the street and going with his uncle to see the Tigers. He fell in love with the pickles from Grunt’s market on Dexter, and television, watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and The Milton Berle Show. He loved going to movies at the Avalon Theater and going to Boesky’s and Darby’s for lunch and dinner. But mostly he liked the fact that in America you could do or be anything you wanted.