Branches Book

BRANCHES

At the age of 27, I was having a quarter life crisis much like many people my age. I was living alone in a small apartment and questioning my life. Most of my family up and moved to Israel to get away from Hitler, and I lost contact with many of them. On top of that, I couldn’t keep kosher anymore because the Nazis made it impossible. And then I met my husband, Emil. He had a very similar upbringing to me: he went to an all boys Jewish school, and his mother died when she got a black market abortion. Like my father, his mother was the devout Jew in the family, and he was less religious after she died. But Emil was no ordinary Jew, he was a socialist, and he made this fact very known. Before Hitler came to power and before I met him, my husband expressed his socialist views very openly and was sent to labor camps. The oppressive nature of Germany during the Holocaust existed before the genocide began, and he was beaten on a daily basis simply for having an opinion. It’s truly absurd. How can a government imprison someone and deprive them of their family simply because they express themselves? He was luckily released in 1935 because, had he not been, he would be dead. What can I say, I love a bad boy. We married in 1938, and then things took a turn for the worse. We went off on our honeymoon and motorcycled into the sunset. We traveled to Frankfurt, but our vacation was cut short when Emil’s sister called to inform us that Nazis had gone to our house looking for Emil. Specifically. For. Him. Because he had been in their labor camps before, they already knew he was a Jew, and they targeted the ones they knew were Jewish before rounding up the masses. I’d dealt with some Nazis before, but this time was different. It felt different . For the first time, the fear felt real. The Nazis were no longer a terrifying nightmare. They were the reality. Emil had been in labor camps before, but this was before Hitler. Before the Jews were being murdered. The situation was more dire than it was back then, and they were looking for him, for the love of my life. Emil was prepared. He knew something like this would happen. I guess you don’t stand up to the Nazis unless you’re prepared. He had a passport and a visa, but they were in Hamburg where he was a wanted man. Because he could not return, I had to make the perilous journey on my own. Although I feared they’d know I was his wife and take me, I managed to get to his papers safely. While we were waiting for the train to leave Germany, two SS men came up and grabbed my husband. The fear had never, ever been more real than it was in this moment. Not only were the Nazis real, but they had Emil. And then they brought him back. They were just searching him for papers. It was a random check and it could have happened to anyone. He was not yet wanted in Frankfurt, so we said our goodbyes and Emil stepped on a train for

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