Dan's Papers - October 6, 2006 - World War II And Greenport

There are quite a few of us here on the North Fork. Those of us old enough to remember firsthand the photographs and stories of Allied troops liberating Europe's concentration/extermination camps at the tail end of World War II some times are reminded of such times. Indeed, some North Forkers were among those liberators. And those liberated.

Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka. We read about them all in the New York Daily News, for example, then only a few pennies a copy. Now, more than 60 years later, those photographs and stories remain vivid in our minds, painful in our hearts.

Why then would quite a few of us here on the North Fork choose to go indoors on a splendid September Sunday afternoon to hear this grief once again? Perhaps because this time the terror ends in triumph.

The setting was Greenport's Peconic Landing and the guest speaker was Barbara Lovenheim, author of "Survival in the Shadows: Seven Jews Hidden in Hitler's Berlin."

Ms. Lovenheim had traveled to Greenport from her Manhattan home at the request of Ellen Zimmerman, president of North Fork Reform Synagogue in Cutchogue. It was a journey much appreciated by the North Fork audience.

For Ms. Lovenheim told of another frightful time that brought forth the best in some Berliners as had the Twin Towers attack brought forth greatness in New Yorkers. Most of us, said the author, think of WWII Berlin as empty of Jews. Not so. In 1943 there were more than 4,000 Jews in hiding in Berlin. Of these, about 1,400 were alive at the end of the war in the spring of 1945.

Lovenhein's story is about seven of those surviving Jews. Seven who came to the United States at the end of the war. Lovenheim was able to interview four of the seven and the result, after considerable research, is a videotape that is heartening and a book that has won praise in England, Germany, and now the U.S.

I'll add that Lovenheim was accompanied by John Grimes, an ABC news correspondent. He read passages from the book - and the beauty of his reading was surpassed only by the spirit of the Jews and the more than 50 non-Jewish Berliners who hid the seven for more than two years.

This North Fork audience, so far removed in space and time from the Third Reich rubble that was Berlin in the last years of the war, expressed surprise that so many Jews survived in that city. Had they not all been sent to the so-called work camps?

No, they had not. And Lovenheim introduced us to seven members of the Arndt, Lewinsky and Gumpel families who made up the largest known group of Jews to survive hiding in Berlin. As a further surprise to her North Fork audience, Lovenheim's story is not one of unrelieved horror, as WWII accounts so often are.

Her story is, instead, one filled with humor and courage. I guess that's the stuff of survival. Here's what we heard - we, the fortunate North Forkers gathered at Peconic Landing.

The group of seven was headed by Dr. Arthur Arndt who had served as a medic in the German army in WWI. With Dr. Arndt were his wife, his two young-adult children, and three friends. These seven were without ration cards, without identity cards, usually without jobs, and always relying on the help of others. Often Dr. Arndt's patients in pre-war Germany were the ones providing a room here, a closet there, during the war.

The group relied also on lying, disguise, even stealing. They had to "adopt the behavior of the enemy" if they were to live, said one of the children. Indeed, two of the young women dressed in the best clothes they could find and "crashed" a Stormtrooper Christmas party. They watched a show and ate the SS food. For food was the major concern. Starvation had reduced that 4,000 figure to 1,400.

Those young women frequently dressed as widows - black veils covering their faces did the job. Along with luck. One bit of that luck was owning a radio. They celebrated the Normandy invasion, the defeat at Stalingrad.

After the war, safe here in the U.S. (Queens and Hempstead), the seven survivors flourished. One worked as a nurse in New York City, another for CBS. Dr. Arndt served at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in New York City. On the videotape one of the seven wondered about their lives. "Where does one get the guts to do these things?"

As North Forkers left for home after a celebratory sip of wine in the Peconic Landing library, I suspect they were asking themselves the same question.