They Called Us Nazi’S N----S and White Trash

By Gittel Maria Barankowitcz

All throughout, the story weaves around WW2 and the bombing of Berlin, Germany. Berlin as an island was divided by four nationalities and surrounded by the Russian zone. The book also depicts the life of a mixed marriage between a black US Army sergeant and a white German girl, who also brought her all-white daughter into the marriage. The couple had four racially mixed children. Army life was fun and easy, but after the tour of enlistment ended, their lives changed drastically. Living as a mixed family in the 1950s and 1960s in America turned them into a hunted family unit.
The book also gives remembrance to the yellow Juden stars and the six million Jewish people who died in the concentration camps. WW2 leaves a bad taste in the writing, but the Russian Occupation and their take over after the war was a self-lived and very scary experience as told in the book.
Also, toward the end of the story is a description of a granddaughter living in Cairo, Egypt, at the same time as the people in Cairo rebelled. There was WW2 again with the tanks, the airplanes, and the military raids.
A special thanks to you, America for saving us time and time again from Hitler and the Russian Occupation in Berlin, Germany.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493149490

Gittel Maria Barankowitcz

Living in the United States of America was a childhood dream come true. It is still vivid in my mind when I saw some Shirley Temple movies, the skyscrapers in the big cities, and the American Indian stories. Growing up during WW2 and the totalitarian Nazi regime made me appreciate the American government and how it is constructed. I also wanted to be free. Berlin, Germany is my place of birth and I still love it, but there was hell to pay in WW2 and then the Russian Occupation. My life here in the USA was not always pleasant but when it is all said and done, we made it¯me, my black husband, and my five children. Thanks again, America.

Book preview

THEY CALLED US NAZI’S N–-S AND WHITE TRASH

GITTEL MARIA BARANKOWITCZ

Copyright © 2014 by Gittel Maria Barankowitcz.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013922040

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4931-4948-3

   Softcover   978-1-4931-4947-6

   eBook   978-1-4931-4949-0

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.

Rev. date: 01/11/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

141795

CONTENTS

Chapter I:   Mr. Smith

Chapter II:   Mutti Friedl

Chapter III:   World War II, Yellow Stars, and the Jews

Chapter IV:   Feelings

Chapter V:   Nazis Get Out

Chapter VI:   Wedding Bells

Chapter VII:   Lehrer Kochran

Chapter VIII:   Juvenile Hall

Chapter IX:   Blessing or Curse, and There Is a Jude in Every Woodpile

Chapter X:   Fourteen and Pregnant

Chapter XI:   The X-Nazi and the Six Million Jews

Chapter XII:   Christmas Long Ago

Chapter XIII:   Good-Bye

Chapter XIV:   Welfare Myth

Chapter XV:   Flames in the Night

Chapter XVI:   Chicago

Chapter XVII:   Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey

Chapter XVIII:   Egypt

Author’s Biography

CHAPTER I

Mr. Smith

12/3/2011

Mr. Smith is a personal counselor in Pine Valley. I had an appointment with him for four o’clock, on Monday night. It was fall; the leaves were falling off the trees, and there was a chill in the air. I rushed to get out of work early that day, to go to the appointment. My mind blanked as to what I am going to tell him. The kids were in a foster home, and my husband and I broke up. Only my daughter, Sonya, was living with me in a hotel room in the next town.

I hated my life, and I felt very depressed, but well, there is nothing to lose by trying. I am going to see that Mr. Smith and find out what he had to say.

The office was only a block away from my job, but it seemed like it was a thousand miles away. The lady at the desk acted very polite, when she asked my name. Mrs. Jones, she said, Mr. Smith will be right with you. Then she motioned me into his office.

I’m Mr. Smith, he said and then he asked me to sit down. I took a good look at him but somehow I did not like what I saw, and I was to tell that man my problems. It seemed like he had his mind made up about me already, when he told me that my husband came by to see him and he knew some of our problems. The thing that really bothered me about Mr. Smith was his voice. It sounded kind of deep and melodic. Something in my mind was against that vibration. He started to write something down on a piece of paper that left me free to look around in the room. Next to the door on the right-hand side was a clock, and it seemed like that that clock was hypnotizing me—click, click, click, click. By that time, my mind had sounded the alarm and my whole body was in a defensive position. He asked me how my children were doing in the foster home and if I was planning to go back home with my husband. I answered him in short words because, at that moment, I was not sure of anything. I finally decided to talk more in depths about my broken marriage to Mr. Smith. Trying to collect my thought, I said to him:

My husband and I have been married for fifteen years. Seven of those years have been spent as members of the United States Army. Life in the military was easy and fun. We lived most of the time in government Quarters, and I also spent time in my houses in Berlin, Germany.

He interrupted me and asked with disbelief, Your houses in Germany?

I said, Yes, I had two apartment houses in Berlin, but I sold them before we came back to the states in 1962.

How was life treating your family in the service? he wanted to know.

Very well, there were no racial problems where we were stationed in Agsburg and Berlin. Mixed marriages between German girls, Asians, and others from different countries were not uncommon. In the army, it felt like we were one big family. The children had playmates, and there was no name-calling like n—g—s, burnt toast or Nazis. My husband and I got along very well. There were army picnics to go to and parades, Christmas parties at the camp, and visits to the October fest, in Munching.

In the summer of 1962, we got orders to go to Massachusetts, in the USA. That was easier said than done. We only had a few days to find living quarters before my husband was ordered to report to Fort Davens. Lucky for us, we found an apartment in the next town called Iron-Burg. It was a nice little town. The people seemed friendly and did not give us any foul looks, when they saw my black husband, my white daughter and I, with our three mixed children. Life settled down for us. We made friends with four other mixed couples and one black family. Again, we had fun going swimming in Fort Davens. There also was an Indian village not so far away, which we visited all during the warmer months of the year. Life seemed good; the only thing I noticed was that my husband started drinking a lot. With the drinking came the name-calling and the fights, which ended up in hitting the children or me, lamp throwing or other objects. One time he tried to hit me with a hammer, but I pulled my head backward that’s why I only got a little tab on the forehead with some bleeding. The reason for his madness was that I just mopped the living room floor, and he slipped. He was working outside on his car, using the hammer. The children were screaming, and I was crying. That went on until he calmed down and went back outside. The tone was set for things to come, but I did not feel like talking about it anymore, to Mr. Smith.

Well, Mrs. Jones, then I’ll see you in one week from today at the same time. I hurried out of the room and out of the building to meet Sonya, my oldest daughter, who was waiting for me in the parking lot by my shop (job).

It took us about twenty minutes to get back to the hotel. I fixed some soup and butter-bread, and we ate. The hotel room was crummy; it had gray wallpaper with green, pink, and purple flowers on it, which must have been there for about twenty years. We had twin beds and a long dresser. The only things I liked in the room were two black fake leather chairs and a small table right by the window. We also had our own bathroom with a toilet and a shower.

The telephone rang, and it was Sonya’s boyfriend. I heard her say she was going to meet him in an hour. After she hung up the phone, she turned around and asked, Well, Mom, how did you make out in counseling?

I can’t stand that man, I told her, but one thing he made me do, he started me thinking about my future.

Sonya went out on her date, and lay down on the bed. The pillows did not feel right, so I propped them up and tried to relax."

I wonder what Sarah and Karen are doing? They are my two older children who were with a family in Fairmont. They hated to be in a foster home! Sarah was fifteen and Karen was thirteen. The two younger ones were in another foster home not too far from the hotel; Frank, my son, was twelve; and the baby, Candy, was ten.

Poor children, they went through so much and now this. But there was nothing else that I could do at this moment. I tried to picture them in my mind. Sarah was fifteen years old, 5'3" tall with brown hair and beautiful dark eyes. The face with her small nose and her slender figure made her look delicate and petite.

Karen, my thirteen-year-old, had the look of a beautiful olive-colored Indian doll. She kept her hair in two long braids, softly draped around her shoulders.

The baby Candy was ten. Candy projected exactly what her name projected. She was lollipop and sugar cones with dark blonde hair, highlighted by glimmering red streaks.

Frank Jr. was a handsome young man. He was tall and skinny with a very light complexion.

Then there was my white German daughter, Sonya, who was by now twenty years old. The other children were mixed. The offspring of a mixed marriage between an American soldier and me, a German girl.

Thinking about the children made me miss them a whole lot more. What am I going to do? Asking the court for support from my husband would help, but that could take months.

Being a machine operator in a sewing factory doesn’t pay too much, and apartments are expensive. At the time, I could have gotten money and food stamps from the welfare to supplement my income. We owned our own house in Pine Valley; it was an old house, but it was a home. (My husband was still living there.)

On the one hand, I missed the old man (that’s what I called him), and on the other hand, I felt free. I was tired of the beatings and the cursing and fights almost every night. It was hard to raise five children and work at a full-time job, plus put up with my miserable married life. I also knew that the kids needed help. They were beginning to show signs of depression. You could even call them disturbed. That is another story, and I did not want to think about it at this time; I had to concentrate on the present problems right now. What was best for all of us? I decided to go to counseling for while and see what was going to happen.

The week went by fast, and soon it was Monday again. I found myself going back to see Mr. Smith. It was the same as last week. The lady at the desk was polite, and then I was back in Mr. Smith’s office. How are the children, Mr. Smith asked me, and have you heard from your husband? No, I have not heard from my husband. He told me to get out and take my white daughter with me. I did. He kept the four children with him until children and youth started an investigation that resulted in them being placed in foster care, as far as I know they are doing well, I told him, right now I have to try to pull myself together. I have no confidence at all to do anything right. First I have to straighten my life out, then I can get my children back. The ticking of the clock seemed loud, and the room felt hot and sticky. May I smoke? I asked him. He gave me permission, and as soon as I had the cigarette in my hand, I felt better.

You were born in Germany, Mrs. Jones, weren’t you? Tell me something about your background. Mr. Smith asked.

I had to think for a moment… what was my background? Well, I said, my background was a chain of pain. My mother died when I was born. I had two stepmothers, one of which took her life with gas. I went through the war in Germany, WW2, and the Nazi Regime. My father was a business man and my mother’s people owned a pipe business called Rohr-Leitungsbau. Everyone in my family is well educated except for me. When I was nineteen, I had a baby without being married. Then I met my husband, who was a Negro, and here I am.

He looked at me kind of strange. I know that I must have sounded kind of sassy. Mr. Smith had been sitting across from me at his desk, but now he got up and pulled his chair next to the desk on the right side. I had the feeling he was moving to close, and I moved my chair back toward the wall behind me. Then he put his right hand toward his right temple, and he looked like he was in deep thought. He addressed me by my first name, which is Hetta and said, Tell me more about your mother and why she died!

I went ahead and told him my mother’s story.

Her grave was the fifth in the row. The black marble stone read:

Jenifer, Ruth, Alix

Image1.jpg

Rest in Peace

Sitting right in front of her grave with my knees pulled up to my chin and my face resting on them was my favorite pastime. I felt at home right here in the graveyard. Resting in the grave right in front of me was my mother. In my mind, I could picture her running through the park with me, her long black shiny hair dancing in the wind. To me she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Small and petite with a face like an angel and sad big brown eyes like that of a deer. Both of us could be playing ball together or sit by the pond and watch the little pebbles draw circles in the water. Sitting right next to her grave like that and dreaming made her feel so real to me that I had to pinch myself to come back to reality.

Ivy was covering the grave, and there were flowers growing on it all during the summer month. Sometimes, I pretended she wasn’t really dead and she would walk up to me, gather me in her arms, and take me home with her. Other times I felt like I could live no more without her, but most of the time I just sat there thinking. I remembered the stories my family told me about her. Like the day she was sitting in a chair in her basement apartment. The room was cold, dark, and damp; but that did not bother her, she was going to have a baby. Is it going to be a girl or a boy? My mother was a daydreamer just like me, and she could picture all the things in her mind that she was going to do for her baby.

The one-room apartment needed a lot of fixing up before the baby was born, and maybe some paint would help. The gray paint made the room look so ugly. Her only furniture that was in there was a white metal bed, one table, four chairs, and a half-broken down dresser. The kitchen did not look any better. All of the floors were concrete. The only pretty thing in the apartment was the curtains, the bedspread, and the tablecloth; my mother was so happy when she found the inexpensive material, so she stitched it all by hand herself. The material was rust and brown, green and gold, with little black specks woven into it. When the evening breeze slowly moved the curtains, they looked like a beautiful fall day had stepped into the room. There were some paper roses in a glass jar sitting on the table and a few inexpensive green plants on the windowsill.

My mother wasn’t worried about the small amount of food she could only afford to buy or the very little sum of money she earned working in a machine factory. All she could dream about was her baby as her mind wandered to the place where she was born. It was a small city in Poland that once belonged to Germany. She recalled the big fancy house she grew up in and her father, a businessman, who made his money in pipe laying. Her upbringing was that of a lady; she was well educated and properly reared. Her parents had her life all planned out for her, but the day that my mother met my father changed it all.

They met at a party (whenever papa attended a party, he was the belle of the ball); it was a costume party. Everyone had to attend in costume. Papa’s friend was dressed as a nanny pushing a baby carriage; my father was dressed as a baby lying in the carriage with his feet hanging out, a bib around his neck, and a pacifier in his mouth. He was very fortunate that the great big carriages were in style in the 1930s. When the two men entered the party, everyone fell out laughing, and that made my mother notice him. Later, they danced, and besides being a charmer, my father was also a very good dancer. He danced and charmed her right off her feet. Later on that evening, they found a quiet table, and he told her all about himself.

He was born in Berlin, Germany; his family was a good, solid middle-class family, not rich but comfortable. They owned a property, and they owned a business; therefore, they could afford to send him to the gymnasium. He should have been a doctor because he had what you call healing hands. Whenever someone was hurt, papa knew just what to do, but when it came to work in school, he flunked out. In deciding what to do with his life, he set out to be a wander-bursch (that is equivalent to the hippy era).

He wandered from city to city and stopped long enough to earn some money to keep him going, and then he moved on to the next place. That is how he happened to be in my mother’s hometown; he came, saw, and conquered because my mother fell in love with him that night.

He decided to go home and settle down; his parents bought him his own business—fixing and building cars. My mother knew that he would not be acceptable to her parents, but she was in love with him, so she went to live in Berlin. Once she was in Berlin, Papa began seeing her regularly, so here she was, sitting in her moist, dark and cold basement apartment waiting for him to come to see her so she could tell him the news.

They got married right away, but there were complications. The pregnancy did not come along well. It was a heartbreaking experience when the doctor told them that my mother should be put in a hospital right away.

In September, I was born. I was a very healthy baby, but my mother never got out of her hospital bed again. They separated us immediately and transferred her into the intensive care unit. She was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. Her last wish was a pair of slippers and a housecoat for the day that she could get up to see her baby. In November, she was dead. Once she was buried, the argument started about what to do with the newborn baby. No one wanted me! It took both sides of the families a long time to make up their mind what to do. In the meantime, I was left in the hospital. My mother’s family did not want me until finally Papa’s mother took me into her home.

As I was telling Mr. Smith that story, I could feel deep emotions rising in me. At one time my voice broke, and tears started coming to my eyes. What a miserable way to start a life. But one thing had happened to me while I was talking. I had opened up to him and told him my deepest feelings. Are you all right? he asked me. Yes, I feel fine, I told him. He looked at the clock, and I knew the hour was over.

My feet felt heavy as I got up, and my head felt light. It seemed like I wasn’t able to shake the spirit of the moment. See you next week, Mr. Smith said. I whispered good-bye and almost ran out of the door and the building. My daughter was waiting for me again in her little white Volkswagen. Gee, Mom she said, you look shook-up. I didn’t feel like talking, so I told her I had a headache and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

When we got to the hotel, they told us, in the lobby that we had four phone calls. I got the telephone numbers, and we went upstairs. Not feeling like talking or calling anyone, I put it off until the next day. Sonya ate something and then got ready to go out.

*     *     *

Sonya was a nurse’s aide in a nearby state in a state school for the handicapped. She liked her job and was well liked at the school; the children loved her. At least she finished high school and also was trained as a computer operator; deep