Most of us have led lives of relative calm and order. Some of us are thrown into chaos by events beyond our control. We are grateful to Ursula for sharing her story with us.
A Long Journey By Ursula Cohn Kramer
I was born in Aachen, Germany next to Cologne, at the border where Belgium, Holland and Germany meet. It was the first city the Allied forces bombed to smithereens. When it was re-built after the war some exterior facades were left as is, and, where possible, others were repaired and only the interiors were modernized. This is why it is still so beautiful. As part of the liberation treaty, everyone expelled during the war was invited by the city to return for a visit, all expenses paid, and I had the opportunity to visit in 2007 and once again see my birthplace.
My mother was a fencer, but my father was as tall as he was wide, so he didn’t fence, but instead became the manager of her team. One day, he met a man who told him to take his wife and me and leave the country but would not explain why. My father was a wealthy man, head of the largest corporation in Germany for manufacturing cloth for men’s suits. Father’s reaction was “why should I leave? I have a beautiful flat, a chauffeur, my daughter has a nanny, etc.” On November 9th, 1938, this man came to our house, arrested my father and sent him to Buchenwald. I was six and ½ years old and my mother sent me to live with my Aunt in Holland, while she negotiated to buy my father out of the concentration camp, which in the beginning of the Nazi occupation was possible. The Nazis came to our house, took all our money, the art off the walls, and allowed us to leave the country. My parents picked me up on the way to Le Havre in France, where we took the last ship to leave with German Jews.
According to my parents, the trip was horrible, accommodations were in the bottom of the ship, and apparently the men tore food out of the women’s hands, because they gave us so little to eat, and we were all hungry. We arrived in Bolivia, which at that time was the only country that still allowed German Jews to enter. We had very little, but my father, ever resourceful, hired two young Indian boys who every morning went to the bread factory, picked up loaves of bread, carried in an Ahuayo (like a blanket around their shoulders), and went from house to house to see who wanted to buy a loaf of bread. Bakeries in those days were rare. After a while my father found a job in the only printing & stationery company in La Paz. He was a mathematical genius who never required an adding machine, and apparently, they saw his potential.
My mother was unable to work, as she had developed Emphysema and Asthma while still in Germany. I remember I had to go after school to the homes of wealthy people and pick up the orange peels they saved for us. My mother boiled the peels until soft, let them cool, cut them into strips and covered them with sugar. When my father came home, he made little bags from cellophane paper, and we put some of the peels into the bags, tied them with a ribbon and we found people who wanted to buy them. I attended school and learned Spanish. Our life in Bolivia was hard and continued for 11 years, until we finally located my parents’ friends from Germany who had moved to Cincinnati. In order to immigrate to the U.S., we needed a sponsor to guarantee that if my father and I could not find gainful employment, they would support us.
We arrived in the U.S. towards the end of 1949. I was 17 and had reached the country where I would spend the rest of my life. My Uncle who had emigrated to China to escape the Nazis, had arrived earlier in California, and he found us a tiny apartment. I slept in an alcove on a cot, and my parents shared a room which had a couch that at night opened into a bed. There was no hot water, and we were allowed to take a bath once a week. This involved putting a heater into the bathtub being very careful as if you put your hand into the water you could be electrocuted. The cost was so high that the three of us had to share the bath water.
My father had been the President of the B’nai B’rith group, a benevolent organization, in Bolivia, and then became the President in the U.S., so I joined the youth group. There were meetings once a month, and one day, a very good-looking young man showed up at one of them. We started to date and after a couple of years David and I fell in love. He was drafted to go to Korea and one night while in boot camp, fell asleep at the wheel, hit two other parked cars, knocked out all his upper teeth, broke his nose, etc, and ended up in the Hospital in Camp Pendleton for three months. While there, he was diagnosed as “Manic Depressive”. When I told my mother that we were in love, she warned me that there was no cure for the condition he had, but I told her that we could fix it, because we loved each other. Against my parents’ wishes, we had a small afternoon wedding at the Temple to which we belonged. My mother foresaw our lives more clearly than I, as my husband suffered multiple nervous breakdowns and many surgeries during our forty years together, until his death.
I worked for many years in the medical field as an administrator and contributed to establishing three dialysis treatment centers. When my life permitted, I was able to turn my attention to helping others and became an active volunteer in my community’s Ombudsman program.
Now at age 87, my health leaves something to be desired, but I am so grateful to live in a beautiful house and be surrounded by wonderful friends and children, who make sure I am being taken care of. I am a very lucky woman.