What? I Can Do That?: Growing up in Nazi Germany

By Oscar Kugelstadt

The gripping story of a child overcoming incredible odds
to become a successful business man and raise a great
family. Tells you how you can do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469183916

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Oscar Kugelstadt.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012904810

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-8390-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-8389-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-8391-6

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

So began the Canadian adventure

Acknowledgements

I hope you had as much fun reading this chapter of my life as I had in writing it. I want to say thank you to my wife Ella, who assisted me with many good ideas and important dates. And, of course, my everlasting thank you for her always being there for me, through thick and thin, and bringing enough satisfaction to my life that I cared to record it in the first place for the benefit of my family and anyone else who cares enough to read about it.

You’ll notice Ella’s chapter is, in its title, all in caps. That is no accident. She has impacted my life like nothing or no one else has or ever will, and it was only appropriate for me to show it in that manner.

I would also like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Mike Pincher, my friend and lawyer for fifteen years, and author of the book, Evolution: Reductio Ad Absurdum, and Its Meaning for Public Education (Publishamerica, 2010). He helped organize the structure of this work, brought me to further insights about some of the characters and me personally that I hadn’t considered before, and added to and expanded upon some of the themes included herein.

Prologue

This story is mostly about the culture and customs of Germany from the 1930s to 1950s, including the Hitler regime, as seen from my young eyes as I lived it as I can best remember it. It also relates the impact these experiences have had on my life. I was born on March 7, 1930, in a small agricultural town named Dotzheim in the state of Hessen. The deep world recession had just begun its hideous run.

There would be times that I need to check my memory with the facts. I wanted to start from my early childhood, proceed into my late teens, and end with my early 20s, all the while reflecting my feelings and beliefs as I saw them at that time.

I am part of a small number of people who are still alive to tell the story of what happened during this time. I am now eighty-two years old and hanging on. Of course, at the very beginning of my life, I have to rely on what my mother and other relatives told me, because my memory of that time is, as you might imagine, rather foggy.

I’m also including some of my present-day perspectives on some of the special events and people in my life, as well as on life’s concepts in general. I think you might find some of them worth your time and consideration. I truly believe that there are some things only experience can teach, and these perceptions can be at least informative and thought-provoking if nothing else.

With all of these things in mind, let’s get started.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Chapter 1

The Formative Years

My parents, Emil and Bertha Kugelstadt, were working-class people who were adversely affected by the deepening depression in Germany. My mother, who was born on May 27, 1908, and died on January 14, 1990, was a typical German housewife. My father, who was born in 1906 and died in March 1968, worked for the city. Every evening, my father had to light all of the gas streetlights in the village. He would light each lamp post with a long pole that had a lighter at the tip. He turned on the gas, lit the lamp, and went on to the next lamp post. He had to start well before dusk to light all of them, and it took him four hours to get the job done. The next morning at dawn, he would reverse the process and turn every light off. It did not pay much, but it covered rent and grocery expenses.

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Oscar’s Father          Oscar’s Mother Bertha

My parents lived in an old house smack dab in the middle of our town. The town had a population of seventy-eight hundred. When I say old, I really mean "old!" The house dated back to over eight hundred years. No, this is not a misprint. It was the oldest house in Germany still in service at that time. (In the early’60, the city tried to move the building because of its historical value, but it collapsed during the operation and was, consequently, demolished.)

Many Things about Me Were Premature and Difficult,

Even My Birth

In the early’30, poor or working-class people did not have the option to have their babies born in a hospital, except in emergency situations. Therefore, I was born in that house with the assistance of a midwife. I lived there for the first two years of my life. I was delivered prematurely, a seven-month gestation baby, and weighed less than one pound. According to my mother, my skin was transparent with a total lack of pigmentation. She tried to bottlefeed me, but I was not cooperating and spit it all out. In the early ’30, babies in my condition were pretty much doomed to die.

Dr. Mueller advised her to allow me to go to sleep and die peacefully. He said that if I did survive, I would be retarded and a cripple. They did not speak with political correctness in those days. You were not mentally challenged, you were retarded. You were not physically impaired, you were a cripple—period. No beating around the bush. My mother, ever the diplomat that she was, told him to mind his own business. I thought that was his business.

The man died two years later. My mother had nothing to do with it.

My mother had three choices: she could follow the advice of our good doctor and allow me to die peacefully in my sleep; she could sell me to Barnum and Bailey’s Freak Show; or she could try to find another way to save me. The last option is what she chose, and apparently it worked because I am still around. Every hour on the hour, 24/7, she fed me a teaspoon full of formula with an eyedropper that she put in my mouth. Lo and behold, it worked. She did that for three months at which time, I responded to the normal way of feeding a baby, and I contentedly suckled on a bottle.

Also, about the same time, I became less transparent (I recently heard that expression in a different context!) and developed pigmentation. My mother was able to show me to friends and relatives without having to resort to a cover up. Unfortunately, this wasn’t my only experience with the Grim Reaper. By the time, all was said and done. Grim and I were on a first-name basis.

My First View of Nazis versus Communists

As I had mentioned before, the house my parents lived in at that time was built eight hundred years ago, during the Middle Ages. My father told me later that the entrance to the house was about five feet eight inches high. It must have been higher than the average height of people that lived at that time. If you were five feet ten inches or six foot, you would actually have to duck to get into the entrance, which might be a little problematic for a seven-feet-five-inch-tall basketball player.

My first picture ever taken was in the garden in the front yard of that house. My mother was holding me in her lap, and a photographer positioned himself in front of us with a cloth placed over his head. Simultaneously, with the precise time, the flash went off, something went off in my little body, and might well have been my very first experience with flatulence. Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, but I survived. It was the first of my countless humiliations.

In 1932, my parents moved into another apartment building nearby. It was here, at the age of two, that I have my very first recollection. (Today, it is probably more the memory of a memory.) I heard a loud commotion outside on the street at a nearby intersection, and, curious as I was, I wanted to know what was going on. I ran to the window, but, as a two-year-old, I was not tall enough to look out of the window. I remember distinctly pulling over a little stool and climbing up on it… that provided me enough height to look out of the window.

I saw two groups of men. One group was dressed in brown shirts and the other group was wearing ordinary street clothing. What I did not know at the time was that this was a group of Nazis and Communists in a battle. The reason I remember that I was only two years old is that in 1933, Adolf Hitler took power in Germany and all of the fighting and the resistance became a thing of the past.

As I was watching, my mother came to me, pulled me off the chair, and said something to me, probably related to the unsuitability of me watching that carnage. I then heard heavy footsteps on the stairs leading up to our apartment. My father burst through the door wearing his brown Nazi uniform. His face was bleeding. My mother screamed while grabbing washcloths and wiping the blood off his face. That is as far as my memory goes. Of course at that time, I did not know that my father was a National Socialist Party Member. Today, they are called Nazis. It was a very scary and profoundly disturbing experience for me, as it would have been for any two-year-old.

Other More Normal Musings

Due to the ongoing depression, my parents were very poor and always strapped for cash. A bakery located nearby had, among other goodies on display, a collection of what we called Americaner or American cookies. I did not see the connection at the time, but one cookie was white and the other was black chocolate, and that was why we called it Americaner.

Every time we walked by that bakery and my mother went in, I begged her to get me an Americaner. I didn’t care whether it was white or black, I just wanted an Americaner. She always denied me but never explained the reason why. In my mind, the reason was she wanted to deprive me the pleasure of enjoying that cookie. Little did I know it was economically essential for her to say no. It was a luxury, not a necessity. Many months went by, and I refrained from asking her.

One day, she came home from shopping and, lo and behold, she had an Americaner in her hand and handed it to me. I was absolutely ecstatic! I was in the front yard of our apartment building and started nibbling away at my Americaner, savoring every little bite, knowing that would be the first and last one I would ever enjoy. I had just taken the first little nibble out of it, when I saw through my peripheral vision, a boy running up to me. He must have been about six years old. He grabbed the cookie out of my hand and ran away. It is hard to believe now how devastating that was to me. I told my mother. My tearful loss found no compassion. She said there was nothing she could do about it, and I should have been more careful. Yeah, sure, a two-year-old should be more careful!

In Germany, we have an age old custom of celebrating Fastnacht (night of fasting). The name, however, was a misnomer. Everybody was celebrating, eating and drinking well, and parading around in costumes similar to what is done here for Halloween. There are colorful parades and all-night parties. Even we kids had a ball. I wanted to be a cowboy and begged my mother consistently to please buy me a cowboy outfit. I did not want to be an Indian because those were the bad guys.

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Halloween Parade in Germany

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Halloween Parade in Germany Annemie and Oscar

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Halloween Parade in Germany Annemie and Oscar 1

When the big day came around, my mother presented me with a clown costume. I was deeply disappointed but could do nothing about. It was that or nothing. Even though I was only three years old, I still remember the feel and texture of that outfit. The fabric was called crinoline. I had to wear that thing every year for the following three Fastnachts. Mother finally relented when the sleeves came up to my elbows, and she decided that I had outgrown it.

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Clown Outfit

I See the Hindenburg

We stayed at that apartment for perhaps another year or two, and then my parents moved again. This time, we moved to the second floor of a small apartment building that belonged to a gardener by the name of Kraus. There I had another exciting experience that I will never forget. I believe everyone remembers the tragedy of the Hindenburg Zeppelin crashing and exploding. I know I do!

One day, I was playing in our yard at the Kraus apartment when I suddenly noticed the sun blacking out. I looked up and saw the Hindenburg less than one hundred feet above my head. I could see the faces of the people inside the gondola. I could see all the patches on that air ship, and I could hear the propeller whirring as it slowly crossed exactly over our house and over my head. It frightened me to some extent, but I stood there fascinated by the sight. My eyes followed it until it disappeared over the horizon. Why the airship was there at that time and why it was flying so extremely low? I have never found out to this very day.

Who Said I Wasn’t A Cunning Kid?

The following Christmas, my parents gave me a small toolset, consisting of a hammer, screw driver, pliers, and a little hand saw. They then went downstairs to chat with the Krauses and left me alone with my new toys. I could not find anything suitable to try out my new tools, and the only things available were the dining room table legs. I sat down and wrapped my little legs around one of them and was wondering if I would get away with that little vandalism. I reasoned that I was way too young to understand, and they would only blame each other for the damage. I started enthusiastically sawing away at the table leg, comfortable in my logic of what would occur. I got about halve an inch into the leg when my parents walked in and quickly stopped my work. Sure enough, they started blaming each other for not providing me with a piece of wood. The moral of the story—you ask. Never underestimate the cunning and manipulative knowhow of even a four-year-old child.

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Talstrasse 6

Uncle Wilhelm, my mother’s brother, was a barber and had his shop in the same house as Opa and Oma Hammer. The entrance was accessible right from the street. My mother was always dreaming of having a daughter, but then nature intervened in her dream, and I was born. No problem for mom, she just gave me a girl’s haircut for the first three or four years of my life until Uncle Wilhelm finally rebelled and gave me a boy’s haircut on my fourth birthday, against Mama’s will. That caused a major uproar, and Bertha and Wilhelm did not talk to each other for years after that incident. It even superseded national and world news, which was not easy, considering that Adolf Hitler took over complete power in Germany about that same time. Ha!

During this approximate time span, the Petris were