Judith (3)

Judith (chapter 3) 

(Special edition) part of: Aviva Magazin, 'writing girls' project. For more: Aviva-Berlin

This Jewish identity of mine gets more and more vague…

Judith was Jewish enough to hide her identity from the Nazis but not enough Jewish when she joined the BDM. 

She was enough Jewish to make Aliya flee to Israel but if her mother did not convert, then, she was not Jewish enough to be Jewish.

What if Ori`s grandmother (or mother) did lie about the conversion, what is he then? He has lived half a life thinking he is Jewish, his surrounding and his country recognized him as Jewish. Maybe that`s enough?

He wrote me that beside the fact he lived in a lie, the questions around his Jewish identity doesn`t really matter to him. Would something like that had mattered to me?

 Although iIm not religious, nor I believe in any kind of god - iIf someone asked me "are you Jewish?" my mechanically, dry answer will always be “Yes”. Why is this thing so hard for me to peal off? Maybe it`s because of this history that follows us from behind, heel after heel and landing on our shoulders only when its suits her, so heavy…and yet,

we are born and then we die. Years go faster as they pass. Why do I need to carry 6 million people on my small shoulders every time when I watch a movie at the end of the day, on my blue couch, with my German boyfriend?

Maybe because I left Israel, maybe because after you leave borders, family and friends behind, you want to be belong to something. You need to be belong to something.My therapist said that a part of us dies every time we "get rid" of a strong feeling, believe or opinion that had been assimilated into us since forever. Maybe that`s why my fear of death is so strong lately and the end look so close. Maybe parts of me are dying, and it hurts, and my flesh is slowlyexposed, this flesh thats look exactly like everyone else`s.

and so, although I do want to remember the past and to learn from it, I don`t want to live it. 

Maybe that`s why Drummer`s mom didn`t tell her son about her past and his future.

Maybe she didn`t want to make his shoulders hurt.

Maybe that`s how she died,

and maybe that why this story is so sad.

I`m still waiting for Ori to come to Berlin …

Judith (2)

Judith (chapter 2) 

(Special edition) part of: Aviva Magazin, 'writing girls' project. 

For more: Aviva-Berlin

According to the Jewish religion, every child of a Jewish woman or converted mother, is a Jew. According to the Israeli law of return, everyone who`s a child of a Jewish  or a converted mother, or was a Jew by the Nazi’s definitions, is a Jew. According to the Nuremberg Laws the Nazis classified people as Jews if they had three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with only one Jewish grandparent was a "2nd-degree Mischling" (a crossbreed, of "mixed blood"), and a person with two Jewish grandparents was a "1st-degree Mischling".

My email to Ori (information from the interview with Axel):

Johanna Noebel (Abramovich, Heidrich):

Your grandmother, Judith`s mom and the sister of Charlotte (Axel`s mom).

Johanna had three children:

Judith Drumer (Abramovich), died in 1990, father: Dov Abramovich.

Ruth E (Abramovich) (still alive) is in a good contact with Ori, father: Dov Abramovich.Norma H, (still alive), father: Otto Heidrich.

Johanna didn`t convert to Judaism (as Axel claims). 

She was born in Altenburg (Germany) and met there Dov Abramovich, 

an unorthodox Jew, who came there to work for the "Bosch" company. 

They married, moved to Riga (Latvia) and had Ruth (I don`t know when she was born) and Judith (around 1934).

Somewhere before 1938, Dov Abramovich and Johanna divorced, and in 1938, Dov and Ruth, the older daughter left to go to Israel. Johanna and Judith stayed in Riga until 1943. Riga was occupied by the Nazis in July 1941, while Johanna and Judith were there. Dov had already left with Ruth to go to Israel before then, in 1938. In October 25, 1941, all Jews were sent to the Riga Ghetto and on 30 November and 8/9 December, 

the Nazis shot and murdered’ about 27.500 Latvian Jews from the ghetto at pre-dug pits in the nearby forest of Rumbula.

Ori said that in Riga, Johanna was investigated by the Gestapo. What helped her to bargain with the Gestapo over her and her daughter`s life was the story about her brother, Werner. He was killed in the beginning of the war, when the German troops came to France.

Also, Judith was a 1^st-degree Mischling and not a "complete Jew".

But still...

To be a 1^st-degree Mischling was not necessarily enough to save her life from the Rumbula massacre? By doing rough calculations, Judith was around 7 in those days, did she have to keep her identity a secret? Was Dov originally from Riga? If so, then people must have known he was a Jew and so was his daughter.

In 1943, they took a suitcase and the dog and ran away to Johanna`s sister, Charlotte and her son Axel in Germany, Pritzwalk. During that time, Johanna, so Axel said, hid Judith`s Jewish identity. 

She changed Judith`s family name from Abramovich to Noebel, her name before the marriage.

Judith also took part in the BDM, a Nazi youth organisation for girls. In the new German small town, people were never  suspicious concerning Judith identity. Maybe because her grandfather, Johanna`s father,  was in the Nazi party, or maybe because Charlotte was the owner of (the only?) grocery store in the village.

 Charlotte herself knew and hid this fact from everyone else. Axel, her son, didn`t know in those days.

In Pritzwalk Johanna met Otto Heidrich, a Nazi soldier. They married and had Norma.

In 1946, after the war, the family left to go to Flensburg (West Germany) because their fear of the Russians (maybe especially because Otto father was a big Nazi officer)

Otto, as Axel said, used to hit Judith with a belt, he said he was a bit crazy.

Because of that, Dov, Judith`s dad, asked to take his daughter to him to Israel.

In 1948, Judith moved to live with Dov and Ruth, her sister in Israel (the British allowed only children under 

12 to join their parents in Israel. Judith was 14, but they made her look younger.)

Johanna and Otto (with Norma? or before she was born?) moved to Berlin a few months before Judith left for Israel. 

Johanna died in Berlin in 1954, without having been in Israel even once.

Judith had two children in Israel, Ori and his sister, and died in 1990 around 56 years-old, from cancer.Norma doesn’t want any connection with Axel, because of the bad way he talks about her father, Otto.

Did Otto know about Judith’s Jewish identity? Did Judith come back to Germany to visit her mom? Is it possible that Judith lied to her children about her mother having converted so they could live safely in Israel as "complete" Jews?

Axel said that he will be happy if you call, I told him a bit about you. He said that he tried to contact your Dad few times, but there was no connection. If you want to call him, let me know and I`ll send you his number.

Ori`s replay mail to me: (my rough translation from Hebrew)

MichaI,  I knew there was a good reason why I asked you not to tell me the story on the phone,

most of the story was unknown to me.

They told me other facts and of course not the details, although I knew that the second husband was a Nazi, 

but not more than that. Not about the different cities, the fellowship in the Hitler youth movement etc. She didn`t tell me anything, of course. 

I didn`t know about the beating she had from her father, which is an abuse, 

or about the mother that gave up her child, which is another abuse. This information is very hard for me and I`ve been crying for some time now, 

maybe over my mother`s misery, that she never told to anyone, and maybe not.

I had for many years suspected a deeper Nazi connection without knowing anything, but now, the story getting clearer. 

I actually always suspected my grandma was not Jewish, deep inside it didn`t make any sense to me, and I never believed in the stories saying she was Jewish. 

It doesn`t really matter to me; what matters is that I lived for 46 years in a lie.

                                                                                           

I`m waiting for Ori to come to Berlin