Out of Broken Glass: A Memoir of Renewal

By Sel Hubert

Out of Broken Glass is the true story of a young German Jewish boy who endures and overcomes Nazi terror and hardship and finds himself a lonely refugee among strangers in wartime England. Orphaned by the Holocaust, he comes to America where he serves in the U.S military and then converts an eight grade education into two college degrees and a successful professional career. He creates his own family, leads a colorful life that features extraordinary experiences and challenges to his past and to his faith and values.

This is the uplifting memoir of Sel Hubert whose tranquil village life in Cronheim is shattered by the Nazis when, as a ten-year old, he is assaulted by his classmates and forced out of his school. Sent to live with strangers in Nrnberg, he becomes immersed in an Orthodox lifestyle and attends the Jewish school where he thrives scholastically. Caught up in the frenzy of a huge Nazi political rally, Sel maneuvers himself to look into the steely eyes of Adolf Hitler but escapes unhurt. No longer able to work and pay for Sels lodging, his father has to bring him home, only to live through the terror of Kristallnacht when the Nazis invade and trash their house and arrest his father who is sent to the notorious Dachau concentration camp. Devastated by that ordeal, Sel and his mother plead with the U.S. consulate for his fathers release and for permission to emigrate to the U.S. but are turned away. Expelled from their village, the family finds refuge with relatives in Augsburg, living in constant fear of further terror and arrest while trying desperately to flee Germany by any legal means.

Suddenly, an offer comes to send just one child to safety in England on the Kindertransport. The Huberts face a cruel choice: which of their two children should they save -- thirteen year-old Sel or his older sister Emma? After a gut-wrenching family discussion, she is chosen in the hope that she can better help to secure a subsequent Kindertransport escape for him, which fortunately happens three months later. Sel bids an emotional farewell to his distraught mother and then travels with his father to the Munich railway station platform where he and hundreds of children say tearful good-bys before boarding a special train that takes them away from their parents, forever for most. He embarks on the terrifying lonely journey to freedom, not knowing where or with whom he will live and is taken in by a Jewish family King in London who makes him feel safe and welcome and restores his broken spirits. He develops close relationships with them and with the synagogue that sponsored his rescue and he writes reassuring letters home to his parents.

But after only 6 weeks, he is again uprooted when, as war threatens, the government evacuates him with his school into the countryside where he is assigned to live with a childless Christian couple in a small village that has no Jews. War breaks out and his fears about the fate of his parents trapped in Germany escalate when he learns that they were sent away. Lonely and yearning for religious sustenance, he seeks spiritual comfort by attending a church service where his Jewish soul is unexpectedly renewed and nourished. Too proud to remain on charitable support, he quits school and starts to work in an office at age fourteen. He later moves into a hostel for Kindertransport refugees in Cambridge where he feels rejuvenated among his own peers and learns to become a motor mechanic. He turns down an offer to enter an Orthodox rabbinic school, reluctant to embrace and commit to such a lifestyle. Early in 1945, he crosses the U-Boat infested Atlantic to accept an invitation to live with relatives in New York where he joins the US Army Air Corps (now U.S. Air Force) and attains US citizenship. As sergeant in the Air Transport Command, he personally pleads with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to administer justice as he boards his military flight to be Chief Prosecutor of the top Nazis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462810246

Sel Hubert

Born in Germany, Sel Hubert’s tranquil childhood was shattered by the Nazis during Kristallnacht, expulsion from his village and separation from his parents at age 13. He escaped to England on the Kindertransport, lived briefly with a Jewish family, then a Christian couple and in a hostel before joining relatives in New York in 1945. After years of anguish, he received conflicting reports on how his parents perished in the Holocaust. Sel served as sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned engineering degrees from CCNY and Columbia University. He joined ITT management at its New York and then European headquarters where he dealt with unique professional and personal challenges, especially in Germany. Back in the U.S., he grew professionally, taught graduate courses for Adelphi University and served as president of his congregation. He ended his distinguished career in human resources as senior consultant with Hewitt Associates. Sel attended the 1981 reunion of Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem and later was invited as “guest of honor” to his Bavarian birth village where he spoke and recited Kaddish for his parents in public during a solemn ecumenical worship service, with surprising results. He and Hilda, married 46 years, have two grown children and five grandchildren. He is a Board member of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, is featured in two educational films on the Holocaust and is a sought-after speaker at schools and colleges.

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Out Of Broken Glass

A Memoir

Sel Hubert

Copyright © 2010 by Sel Hubert.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Out of Broken Glass

Foreword

Life is a Journey

A Short Childhood

The Terror Begins

Kristallnacht and Its Aftermath

Escape to Freedom

In England at War

A New Beginning

A New Direction

The World of ITT

Life in Rye Brook

A Second Career

Retirement and Giving Back

Reunion in Jerusalem

A Shocking Discovery

Confronting My Past

On Being Jewish

My Greatest Gift

Bibliography

This book is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my dear parents, Leo and Hedwig Hubert, who gave me life and the values by which to live it. Their examples of goodness and selfless love and sacrifice have inspired me all my life.

Acknowledgments

This book was a labor of love, made possible by the encouragement and cooperation of a number of people whose valuable help I want to acknowledge here.

My special thanks go to my family and many teachers for motivating me to undertake this project; to Suzanne McConnell for providing constructive critical suggestions for my first draft; to Martha West-Glynn for her skillful and insightful inputs in helping me improve the structure and phrasing of the manuscript; to Rabbis Robert A. Rothman and Daniel Gropper and Cantor Jonathan Comisar for challenging and influencing my concepts in the chapter On Being Jewish; to Gloria Donen Sosin, my dear friend, for her invaluable editorial assistance and guidance; to the dedicated professionals at Xlibris Publishing for shepherding the project to its conclusion; and finally to my wife Hilda for her love, patience and support throughout this undertaking.

I extend my deepest appreciation to all of them.

Out of Broken Glass

When all that’s left is broken glass

Of everything you’ve ever known

And fear and terror stalk your path

As now you face life all alone.

When all that’s left is faith and hope

The world has cut you with its knife

Good people come and help you cope

They save your spirit and your life.

And then you face that crucial choice:

What kind of man are you to be?

A person with a clarion voice

Or one who’ll simply wait and see?

Will you lose courage, hope, and heart?

Like broken glass in shattered pieces

Will you become a jagged shard

Trapped in defeat that never ceases?

No, out of broken glass, much light can come

Mosaic windows, works of art

That show the way, when day is done,

To lives with journeys yet to start.

That is the man you strive to be

Who, with some guidance from above,

Will try to help humanity

Replace blind hate with peace and love.

—Sel Hubert

Foreword

These pages are an attempt to still that small voice within me that asks, After you are gone, what will people know about your life and the journey you traveled? I have written this book to help my family and friends better understand where I came from, how I have spent my life, and how that life experience has shaped my beliefs and values. Having reached the age of eighty-four, I find myself able to look back upon my past and the pattern and purpose of my journey.

I want to acknowledge the vitally positive influence my beloved parents had on my life and my character. I have only childhood visions of them and never got to know them as an adult or even as a teenager. With this memoir, I hope to fulfill the fifth commandment to honor my father and mother and to pay tribute to them, their lives, and the inspiration they have provided in my own existence.

The story of my life in this narrative is factual to the best of my recollection and is now told through the prism of my current life and mind-set. The words used in the dialogue represent an honest attempt to recreate and bring to life the actual scenes as they happened so many years ago. These memoirs will provide not only the historical facts of my life, but also the personal feelings and emotions that enriched it and gave it meaning. May its message serve as encouragement to my children and grandchildren and their heirs as they travel on their own journeys through life.

Life is a Journey

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination.

And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity

And youth to age;

From innocence to awareness

And ignorance to knowing;

From foolishness to discretion

And then, perhaps, to wisdom;

From weakness to strength

Or strength to weakness—

And often back again;

From health to sickness

And back, we pray, to health again;

From offense to forgiveness,

From loneliness to love,

From joy to gratitude,

From pain to compassion,

And grief to understanding—

From fear to faith;

From defeat to defeat to defeat—

Until, looking backward or ahead,

We see that victory lies

Not at some high place along the way,

But having made the journey, stage by stage,

A sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning

And death a destination,

And life is a journey,

A sacred pilgrimage—

To life everlasting.

—Rabbi Alvin J. Fine

Gates of Repentance

A Short Childhood

In the midst of the incredible economic and political chaos and turmoil that gripped Germany soon after World War I, Leo Hubert, a strapping thirty-one-year-old Jewish German war veteran from the small Bavarian village of Cronheim, met, courted, and married a beautiful twenty-one-year-old Jewish German woman named Hedwig Schülein. The wedding took place on May 16, 1922, in the town of Gunzenhausen, located in Middle Franconia in the northern part of Bavaria in Germany. It was a festive Jewish wedding, complete with a traditional religious ceremony, lots of dancing, speeches, and funny stories. It united two prominent Jewish families from two nearby villages, with Hedwig from Thalmässing joining Leo in Cronheim, where his family had lived for two centuries in its small Jewish congregation.

The village of Cronheim, with its medieval castle dating back to the thirteenth century, consisted of only about five hundred inhabitants, mostly rather poor farmers and a few merchants and civil servants. A couple of small stores and some private and public houses were dotted along the main thoroughfares, and a small railroad station helped put it on the map. But much of the village consisted of old farm houses with barns and stables, where horses or cattle pulled creaky wooden wagons laden with homegrown farm products on unpaved roads. Cronheim’s dominant religion was Catholic, as was its only church, and the small group of about one hundred Protestants attended church in a nearby village. Its Jewish community was founded in 1612 and grew gradually to about fifty families by 1834, sanctioned by the Catholic bishop and the Graf of the castle, and coupled with special taxation and property-right restrictions. Thereafter, the Jewish population of Cronheim shrunk steadily as greater economic opportunities opened up elsewhere, including in America. By the 1920s, with the special taxes and other restrictions long lifted, the Jewish citizens of the village had declined to about fifteen families, with many playing an active and often leading role in some of its modest local civic, social, and cultural organizations and activities.

Leo and Hedwig Hubert settled down to a simple life in Cronheim and soon started to build a family of their own. On May 22, 1923, the local midwife delivered their first child at home, a girl they named Emma, after Leo’s recently deceased mother. And then on January 23, 1926, the same midwife delivered their second child at home, and I was that new little boy. They named me Selmar, after my mother Hedwig’s recently deceased father Solomon. They wanted to honor the Jewish custom of naming their child after a deceased grandparent but didn’t like the name Solomon. As a compromise, they were willing to accept a first name that started with S, and when an aunt heard on the radio of an obscure symphony conductor named Selmar Meirovitch, she quickly jotted it down and I have been stuck with that strange name ever since. Yes, I have a first name that nobody has ever heard of and a last name that is usually a first name in many countries, so I often have had to explain, repeat, and spell my name over the years. Later, friends called me Selly, which was then shortened to Sel in my adult life, and even that is often misspelled as Sol or Sal.

My earliest childhood memory, at around age five, was pushing my little red wheelbarrow loaded with toys and my teddy bear from the house I was born in down a few houses to my grandfather Ruben Hubert’s house number 64, where we moved following his death. (That was the first of what eventually became eighteen changes of address in my life). It was quite a big stone house with three stories plus a full attic and a big cellar. It also had two large barns and a great big fruit orchard of apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees. We had electricity but no running water that had to be fetched by pail from the big cast-iron manual pump outside that we shared with our neighbor. There were two primitive non-flushing indoor toilets, one at each level, which at least were classier than an outhouse.

The living quarters were very comfortable and furnished with our precious Jewish family heirlooms, such as the old oil brass Shabbos lamp that hung from the living room ceiling and the magnificent three-tiered silver "Seder Schüssel" (Matzo showcase) that was the custom-made, engraved, silver wedding present to my paternal grandparents from their six children. This ornate cylindrical showcase was the centerpiece of our Seder ceremony on Passover. It stored the three Matzos behind perforated hinged doors and displayed the other required Seder components in maroon glasses nestled in a beautiful treelike silver mounting. Fine china, crystal, and silver ornaments were on prominent display in our living room, and all cushions and covers were either made or embroidered by my mother. The bright large kitchen and well-stocked pantry—my mother’s pride and domain—were kept strictly kosher, with meat and dairy products, dishes, and utensils kept separate. Our cool cellar was stocked with glass jars of delicious homemade fruit preserves, wines, and many other delicacies. It was a traditional Jewish home that enveloped all of us in its warmth.

My father was a salesman for soap products and often was away much of the week traveling on bicycle or in his little red convertible Opel car, carrying his small black case that held all those sweet-smelling samples. Like the rest of the observant Jews in his community, he would always come home well before the Sabbath that started on Friday evening. He was an impressive man in stature and in status, with deep moral and religious convictions. He stood six feet tall with broad shoulders, a firm chin, curly brown hair, and a small mustache. His dark brown eyes projected kindness and firmness and often twinkled with humor and good-natured pranks. You would never know that he was a wounded war hero who had fought gallantly on the Eastern Front and the Western Front in World War I, where he earned the Iron Cross and the Bavarian Service Cross. The only time he agreed to wear them was for official ceremonies and for portraits taken of certain local organizations, a time-honored custom then in Germany. He was equally a patriotic proud German and a proud Jew, without assigning a priority to either one. He was my personal hero and my idol, and I admired and respected this man, as only a little boy can adore his father. I called him Papa and was very proud to be his only son. I wanted to grow up to be just like him, to have his likes and habits and values, and to marry a girl just as wonderful as the one he married.

Her name was Hedwig, but I called my mother Mutti, the German diminutive word for Mutter (mother). She was the warmest, kindest, and most loving mother and wife, and she was just as beautiful inside as outside. Her flowing brown hair framed her pretty face and her soft hazel brown eyes smiled and embraced us constantly, and I adored her. Her top priorities were her family and her Jewish home, but she also loved to dance and sing and play the zither, a flat metal string instrument plucked by a pointed ring. She was a fantastic cook and told the best bedtime stories. Her words, her smile, her touch, all exuded an aura of comfort and warmth and love that permeated our home.

My sister Emma, almost three years my senior, was a tall, bright, and well-mannered girl, and we got along fine as siblings while basking in the love and care of our parents. Klara, our trusted Christian live-in housekeeper, whom we inherited on from our grandparents, did much of the housework and the cooking and chores that we were not allowed to do on the Sabbath. She knew most Jewish customs and helped raise us children as she had earlier helped raise my father and his two brothers and three sisters who had all moved away from Cronheim long ago. In fact, the only relatives I really knew well as a child were my maternal grandmother and her unmarried son, Uncle Martin, with whom I spent two weeks every summer in Thalmässing, and my father’s unmarried brother, Uncle Hugo, who came to visit us twice a year. Two aunts and two uncles had earlier immigrated to America and two aunts and first and second cousins lived elsewhere in Germany. In my eyes, family meant just my parents and my sister, expanded only briefly and occasionally to a few others.

I was a fun-loving child with brown curly hair who, despite repeated doses of vile-tasting cod-liver oil, remained a skinny little runt of a boy. My two closest friends and playmates were Herbert Wild and Nelli Schulmann, both Jewish and about my age. When I was by myself, I loved to play with my toy racing cars, creating and announcing exciting auto races, or practice my budding soccer skills. We had one of the few radios in the village, and our family usually listened to the opera or symphony concerts on Saturday afternoons in the winter and my favorite children’s "Kasperle" (puppet) program on Sunday afternoons. I fondly remember the weekly ritual of me shelling peanuts for my father as he reclined on the sofa reading and listening to the opera, while I was allowed to eat every fifth nut myself, a practice that evolved into my lifelong insatiable love of opera, classical music, and peanuts.

Friday evenings were very special. My father would chant the traditional Kiddush, the blessing over wine and home-baked Challah (bread). Then, taking turns, he and my mother would place their hands on each child’s head and bless us silently with the traditional priestly blessing in Hebrew, always ending with a kiss. This beautiful Sabbath ritual formed a physical and spiritual bond between my parents and me. It gave me comfort and strength in its transmission of their unconditional love, support, and protection, and I felt blessed by them and by God who I felt was watching over me.

Often my father brought home a visiting stranger (poor man) from the synagogue service to share our meal and home for the night, a tradition of hospitality and compassion practiced in our congregation. In the summer, our Sabbath afternoons were frequently spent walking with Jewish friends in the nearby woods. Then, in the evening, we would go bowling in the garden of a local tavern and picnic at the outdoor tables with my mother’s kosher sausage sandwiches and a beer or a soda, accepted quite normally by the other local patrons.

While Jewish families usually stayed together in such activities, they were welcomed and befriended by local non-Jews wherever they went. We considered ourselves to be Jewish Germans just as much as German Jews and had no reason to choose one above the other. We observed Kashrut and most Conservative Jewish customs up to a point, but our women did not wear a Scheitel (wig) or attend a Mikvah (ritual bath), nor did our men normally wear head-covering outdoors or indoors. On the Jewish festivals, my father would wear his shiny silk top hat, and we would all get dressed up in our finest to go to synagogue. My early childhood was really a uniquely peaceful and tranquil existence that was full of warmth and love and tradition, and which created so many pleasant memories for me.

One such memory illustrates the mutual respect that existed between Jews and non-Jews in our village then. As president of our congregation, my father was the guest of honor in the local Catholic Church at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and the Catholic priest was the guest of honor in our synagogue at Kol Nidre service on Yom Kippur, the holiest moment in the Jewish calendar. It was an important display of mutual respect. My father also set up the electric lights on the Christmas tree in the church each year, a sign of cooperation and friendship that symbolized for him much more than just tolerance between religions. Those practices taught me very important values that would become invaluable later on in my life. Our congregation was too small to warrant a rabbi but it had a full-time cantor who was also a religious teacher who lived and taught us children in the synagogue building. I became fluent in reading Hebrew by the age of eight, not an exceptional feat then, and my father sometimes sent me to a local widow’s home on Sabbath to make Kiddush for her family, a gracious gesture that provided the male required to fulfill that function. I loved every aspect of my religious upbringing that became an integral part of my persona as a youngster, much to the delight of my parents.

Cronheim’s public school consisted of just one classroom and one teacher for all grades, and I entered first grade in that citadel of